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INTRODUCING THE THIRD IN A NEW SERIES
OF WHITE PAPERS FROM NEW SCIENTIST
What’s the future of business?
We at New Scientist decided to take a look at how three of its key
drivers – energy, automation and money – might change over the
next decade. To do that, we’ve asked three writers with a deep
understanding of these areas to tell us how they think the future
could unfold, and how it might confound our initial expectations.
In this report, author David Wolman looks at the future of money
in a world increasingly divorcing itself from centralised institutions.
With technology already disrupting the role of the middleman,
he examines how long banks can expect to eke out an existence.
By a subtractive process, Wolman identifies how much of banking
is “socially useless activity” ripe for technological disruption. Even
ostensibly specialist products like initial public offerings and
insurance are being brought to the masses. He also sees a threat
over the horizon to the US dollar’s globally privileged status.
To download your free copy, register online
at newscientist.com/gamechangers.
Sally Adee
Editor, GameChangers

GET YOUR COPY
NEWSCIENTIST.COM/GAMECHANGERS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The author of our third GameChangers report in the series is David Wolman,
who wrote the book The End of Money. Wolman is a contributing editor at Wired,
and has written for a range of international publications including The New York
Times, The Wall Street Journal and New Scientist

GAME
CHANGERS
MONEY
IN THIS EXCLUSIVE
NEW REPORT FIND OUT:

] Why trust in traditional finance
institutions has broken down, leading to
surprising shifts in the currency markets
]Why control of credit is shifting from
banks to individuals with the advent of
disruptive technology and new P2P
business models
] Where is the smart money heading?
Find out about the rise of the blockchain
and understand what’s driving it

Ballooniverse
The exotic particle
helping space expand
Test-tube human
What could we learn from
a synthetic genome?
Meet the Bagginses
Hobbit bones revealed
Olympian Task
Zika-proofing the games
Striking back
Stem cells to help stroke

Analysis
16 Writing our genome What will building
a human genome from scratch achieve?
18 COMMENT
How Donald Trump threatens the climate.
Is Elon Musk right, are we in a simulation?
19 INSIGHT
How to Zika-proof the Rio Olympics

MISQUOTING Hippocrates to
report as “irresponsible” and
defend yourself against charges of “misleading”. The British Dietetic
medical illiteracy is not the best
Association also rejected it.
PR strategy, but those are the
Flawed it may be, but the report
depths to which the UK’s National contains much food for thought
Obesity Forum sank last week.
(see page 28). The consensus on
Forced onto the defensive after
fat, carbs and health has been
publishing a controversial report
under pressure for years, and
on dietary fat and health, the
there is growing evidence that the
pressure group tried to pour
orthodox advice needs revising.
(cooking) oil on troubled waters
The forum probably jumped the
by claiming that the father of
gun, but may eventually prove to
medicine advised eating “rich
have been broadly correct. There
foods” to stay thin, including
is now a pressing need for a
“fatty meats, especially from
rigorous review by a body such as
grass-fed animals”. Where the
Public Health England: despite its
obesity forum got this from is not
“The consensus on fat,
clear, but the wording is very
similar to that on a site promoting carbs and health has been
under pressure for years
grass-fed meat for weight loss.
and may need revising”
To be fair, Hippocrates did
advise overweight people to eat
official-sounding title, the
rich foods. But he also said they
National Obesity Forum is a
should only eat one meal a day,
self-appointed charitable
drink wine, refrain from bathing
and sleep on a hard bed. Grass-fed organisation, something that did
not come across clearly in the
meat doesn’t get a look-in.
coverage of the report.
This less than rigorous
The row also exposes deeper
approach to the facts was largely
problems with dietary advice.
what got the obesity forum into
trouble in the first place. Critics of Scientific disagreements aside,
the report – called Eat Fat, Cut The the protests over the report were
largely based on assumptions
Carbs and Avoid Snacking To
about what the general public
Reverse Obesity and Type 2
would take away from it. Health
Diabetes – say that the authors
officials fretted that we would be
cherry-picked the evidence and
ignored important studies. Public left confused, or use the report as
an excuse to eat fatty food and
Health England condemned the

quit counting calories. The worst
outcome would be for people to
conclude that the health police
don’t know what they are talking
about, and stop even trying to lead
a healthy lifestyle.
These assumptions about how
most of us might respond to
health advice are reasonable, but
they are only assumptions, and
quite patronising ones at that.
They take it for granted that
health advice has to be clear and
unequivocal, even if the science
itself is unclear and equivocal.
What would be really useful is
some detailed research on how
people respond to health
messages, so that genuinely wellintentioned experts, including
the obesity forum, understand
how to share their wisdom with
us. We know from research on
communicating climate change,
for example, that simply handing
down scientific facts doesn’t work
and often backfires. There is no
reason to assume that health
advice is any different.
One thing that scientific bodies
must do is refrain from appealing
to ancient wisdom – a strangely
effective but ultimately selfdefeating rhetorical device.
Hippocrates was way ahead of his
time, but his time was more than
2000 years ago. Modern science
can do better. ■
11 June 2016 | NewScientist | 5

PASCAL ROSSIGNOL / REUTERS

UPFRONT

Europe hit by floods...
A BARRAGE of heavy rain across
France and Germany last week has
forced thousands to evacuate their
homes and left at least 10 people
dead. One region received the
equivalent of six weeks of rain in
a single day.
A weather phenomenon called an
“omega block” is behind the deluge.
In this case, air currents known as
the jet stream have kinked in such
a way as to create a large area of
low pressure over western Europe.
How this fits into the broader
trend of a changing climate is
unclear. Last week’s flooding
event is “not unprecedented but
it is unusual”, says a spokesperson
at the Centre for Hydrology and
Ecology in Wallingford, UK.
Warming temperatures can make

the air hold more water – and that
in turn could mean a greater chance
for floods, says Nigel Arnell at the
University of Reading, UK.
Yet natural fluctuations obscure
the effect that a long-term trend like
climate change has on a single event.
And there are other factors that might
set the stage for more floods – for
example, changes in land use.
Also, shifting air currents – such
as the current omega block – can be
affected by things like temperature
anomalies in the Atlantic Ocean, ice
cover in the Arctic, or air temperature
variability in the tropics. “It’s less clear
how that’s going to be affected by
climate change,” Arnell says. However,
he thinks it’s more likely than not
that the risk of floods will increase
in western Europe over time.

–Paris under water–

...as Oz is battered
WHEN garden swimming pools
are uprooted and washed into the
sea, you know a storm is serious.
That’s what happened in Sydney
this week after the city was
battered for two nights by
ferocious winds, torrential rain
and waves up to 8 metres high.
As New Scientist went to press,
four people had been killed, and
there was widespread damage,
flooding and disruption as the
storm headed south, with flooding
still set to peak in Tasmania.
Luxury properties in Collaroy

“Climate change may mean
more such storms near
inhabited shorelines in the
future – but fewer overall”
Beach lost half their backyards –
as well as that swimming pool –
and the beach itself narrowed by
50 metres.
Ian Turner, director of the
Water Research Laboratory at the
University of New South Wales,
says sand levels on the beach
dropped by between 2 and 5
metres, with 150 cubic metres
6 | NewScientist | 11 June 2016

washed back into the sea from
every metre of the shoreline.
The Australian Bureau of
Meteorology warned last Friday
that the storm would be
unusually fierce because of a rare
combination of monster waves –
called king tides – and the usual
seasonal low pressure zones called
east coast lows that routinely
develop at this time of year.
In a commentary posted online,
Acacia Pepler, who studies the
effect of climate change on east
coast lows at the University of
New South Wales Climate Change
Research Centre, said that there
are usually seven or eight such
lows per year. Her modelling
studies suggest that the current
storms aren’t a result of climate
change.
If anything, east coast lows will
decline overall by 25 to 40 per cent
by the end of the century, she says.
But they may have a larger
impact, becoming more frequent
in warmer months, occurring
closer to inhabited shorelines,
and be boosted further if sea levels
continue to rise. “That means
more properties are vulnerable
to storm surges,” she writes.

Quantum satellite
IT’S the next step towards an
unhackable global network. In
the latest demo, a tiny CubeSat
satellite has produced and
measured photons that all have
the same quantum properties.
The test paves the way for
satellites that could keep
messages secure over longer
distances than ever before,
between New York and London,
for example. Both parties could
exchange encrypted messages,
with the satellite beaming each

of them photons that they could
use to create an uncrackable key.
Even the satellite wouldn’t
be able to eavesdrop on the
messages – unlike current
networks, which rely on trust.
This test is the second attempt
to launch a delicate quantum
experiment into space by the
team based at the National
University of Singapore. But
already things are going better
than first time round – the
equipment was on board an
Antares rocket that exploded
6 seconds after launch in 2014.

Climate on leaders’ minds
IT WOULD firmly put the Paris climate
deal on the road to becoming a reality.
In his meeting with US president
Barack Obama on Tuesday, India’s
prime minister, Narendra Modi,
was expected to announce that his
country would ratify the 2015 Paris
agreement to limit global warming.
This would clear a key hurdle of
needing nations accounting for at
least 55 per cent of global carbon
emissions to officially join, or ratify,
the agreement before it takes effect.

Obama has already said he would
use his executive power to get the
US to ratify it.
But India’s ability to meet its
ambitious climate goals depends on
US investment in India’s development
of clean energy, experts said ahead
of the meeting. India’s energy needs
are huge: some 240 million people in
the country still have no access to
electricity. A clean-energy partnership
was also on the discussion agenda
for Modi and Obama’s meeting.

For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news

Cancer lottery
IT’S tantalising news for people
in Europe. A trial of a cancer drug
called palbociclib has gone well,
but it’s only available in the US.
Results of a trial of 666 women
with advanced breast cancer were

ESA/ATG MEDIALAB

60 SECONDS

Tropics’ tallest tree
At almost 90 metres tall, a Yellow
Meranti (Shorea faguetiana) tree in
the Maliau Basin Conservation Area
of Malaysia is probably the world’s
tallest tropical tree, say University
of Cambridge researchers. It’s just
a few metres short of London’s Big
Ben. Trees in temperate regions, like
the giant redwoods, can grow up to
30 m taller, but no one knows why.

“Breast Cancer Now voiced
concerns that the $10,000
price tag will stop the NHS
from funding the drug”

Enter the BEAM

AP PHOTO/EVAN VUCCI

presented at the annual meeting
of the American Society of
Clinical Oncology (ASCO)
this week. They revealed that
palbociclib combined with
existing drug letrozole increased
Floating free
progression-free survival for a
median of 24.8 months compared IT’S the ultimate sky dive. Two
2-kilogram cubes of gold and
with 14.5 months for women
platinum floating inside a
taking letrozole alone.
spacecraft are now experiencing
Palbociclib has been available
the truest free fall ever achieved
in the US for more than a year,
but you still can’t get it in Europe. by human-made objects.
The European Space Agency’s
The drug’s maker, Pfizer, applied
for a European licence last August, LISA Pathfinder mission is
designed to test the technology
but the European Medicines
needed for a gravitational-wave
Agency is yet to make a decision.
observatory in space. Predicted by
Even if the drug is approved,
Albert Einstein almost a century
UK charity Breast Cancer Now
ago, such ripples in space-time
has voiced concerns that the
$10,000 a month price tag will
stop the National Health Service “The spacecraft can
measure the distance
from funding the treatment.
between the cubes down
Palbociclib is taken with
to the femtometre scale”
letrozole to treat late-stage
oestrogen receptor-positive
are caused by collisions between
breast cancer – the most
massive objects such as black holes.
common form of this cancer.
ESA has long-term plans for
a trio of spacecraft called LISA,
which will fly 1 million kilometres
apart and pick up any changes in
distance between them caused by
passing gravitational waves. LISA
Pathfinder’s test cubes are just 38
centimetres apart, but measuring
that distance to within a trillionth
of a metre, or less than the width
of an atom, as required for LISA
involves the same principles.
The cubes were released within
the spacecraft shortly after
launch, and are now in free fall
together, meaning they are barely
–The two may agree energy deal– moving with respect to each

–In free fall–

other. The first results, released on
Tuesday, show that the spacecraft
can measure the distance between
the cubes down to the femtometre
scale – 100 times better than
planned. That means plans for the
larger observatory can go ahead.
“The most important message is,
we can go with LISA,” said mission
lead Stefano Vitale of the
University of Trento, Italy.

End of microbeads?
TINY plastic beads may have had
their day. A UK parliamentary
hearing this week will consider
whether the nation should follow
the lead of the US by banning
plastic microbeads in cosmetic
products.
Between 16 and 86 tonnes of
plastic microbeads from facial
exfoliants are washed down UK
drains every year, according to a
new report by the Parliamentary
Office of Science and Technology.
The beads are too small to be
filtered by waste-water treatment
and end up being ingested by
fish and other marine organisms,
impairing their health.
“Cosmetic companies need
to clean up their act,” says Mary
Creagh, chair of the Environmental
Audit Committee, which will hold
the hearing. “If they refuse to
act, the Environmental Audit
Committee will consider calling
for a full ban on microbeads.”

An astronaut has floated into the
latest addition to the International
Space Station, an inflatable room
called the Bigelow Expandable
Activity Module. Jeff Williams
opened the hatch to BEAM on
Monday to check its sensors and
confirmed it is in pristine condition.

Star tern
An Arctic tern has claimed the record
for the longest ever migration, with
a 96,000 kilometre trip from the UK
to Antarctica and back. The 100 gram
bird wore a 0.7 g tracking device on
its leg so its route could be followed.
Its colony breeds in the Farne Islands
off Northumberland, and travels
to find food around the Southern
Ocean for nine months of the year.

Perky pensioners
Good news for readers worrying
about old age – recent increases
in life expectancy have been
accompanied by a greater increase
in disability-free years, driven by
better cardiovascular and vision
therapies. A report published by
the National Bureau of Economic
Research showed that between
1992 and 2008, life expectancy rose
by just over a year, while disability–
free years rose by almost two.

Zuck gets hacked
If your password is “password123”,
you’re not alone in your poor digital
hygiene. Facebook boss Mark
Zuckerberg had his Twitter and
Pinterest accounts hacked last
week, revealing that the password
“dadada” was used on both accounts.

11 June 2016 | NewScientist | 7

THIS WEEK

The cosmic
expansion crisis
WE MUST be missing something.
The universe is expanding 9 per
cent faster than it should be.
Either our best measurements
are wrong, or a glimmer of new
physics is peeking through the
cracks of modern cosmology.
If that’s the case, some
lightweight, near-light-speed
particles may be missing from
our picture of the universe shortly
after the big bang. But we might
be in luck. Particle physicists have

“We’ve given these young
cosmologists a great toy,
and they’re trying to break
it. Maybe they have.”
already spent over a decade
chasing something that fits the
bill: ghostly neutrinos unlike
the three already known.
For a cosmological quandary,
the issue isn’t that complicated:
two ways of measuring how
quickly the universe is flying
apart are coming up with
increasingly different numbers.
The first looks at dimples in the
cosmic microwave background, a
glow left behind by the hot, soupy
universe just a few hundred
thousand years after the big bang.
The size of these fluctuations let
us calculate how quickly the
universe was expanding when it
began some 13.7 billion years ago.
The other method measures
how distant galaxies appear to
recede from us as the universe
expands – which led to the
discovery of dark energy, a
mysterious outward pressure
pushing the universe apart.
The trouble comes when we
compare the two estimates. “They
8 | NewScientist | 11 June 2016

don’t agree,” says Adam Riess
of the Space Telescope Science
Institute in Baltimore, Maryland,
one of the recipients of the 2011
Nobel prize in physics for dark
energy’s discovery and an author
of a new paper pointing out the
tension (arxiv.org/
abs/1604.01424).
So what are we missing? Our
picture of what the universe is
made of can’t change much, since
it agrees so well with observations.
These show that the history of the
universe has been a balancing act
between just a few ingredients,
which competed for dominance
as the universe stretched and
changed. This model of the
cosmos has been the mainstream
idea for years, but it’s showing
signs of strain.
“We’ve given these really smart
kids, the young cosmologists,
what we thought was a pretty
good toy, and now they’re
trying to break it,” says Michael
Turner at the University of

YURI ARCURS/GETTY

We may have already seen a particle pulling
the universe’s strings, says Joshua Sokol

Chicago. “Maybe they have.”
Would tweaking the ingredients
themselves help make sense of
the difference?
One possibility is that dark
energy is a little stronger than we
thought. Or it could have ramped
up over time, giving expansion
a bigger push. That’s not a very

MISSING LITHIUM
A fresh particle may solve another
mystery related to the big bang:
why the element lithium is much
less common than it should be.
All heavier elements were forged
during the lives and deaths of stars,
whereas lighter materials like helium,
beryllium and lithium were produced
around the big bang. But lithium
poses an accounting problem: the
early universe had between a half
and a fifth of the amount we think
should have been produced when
radioactive beryllium decayed.
Now, Andreas Goudelis at the

Institute of High Energy Physics in
Vienna, Austria, and colleagues think
they have just the thing to explain it:
a light, short-lived particle with the
power to interact with quarks – the
constituents of atomic nuclei.
The new particle could have
been gobbled up by beryllium atoms,
destroying them before they had
time to decay into lithium (Physical
Review Letters, doi.org/bjm6). It is
predicted to stick around for just a
few minutes or hours – not long
enough to alter the abundances
of other elements.

appealing theory, though, says
Avi Loeb of Harvard University.
The measured strength of dark
energy is already a “big headache”,
he says. Letting it vary in time
would add another, perhaps
unjustifiable, wrinkle. “That would
be twice as much pain,” Loeb says.
But the deeper problem with
darkening dark energy is that it
doesn’t do enough to bridge the
gap between the ancient and
modern measurements. Fiddling
with dark energy enough to help
would put it into disagreement
with other observations. “You can
only do this so much,” Riess says.
The easiest solution, says Riess,
is dark radiation: small, unknown
particles similar to neutrinos,
moving close to the speed of light
around the beginning of time. This
is the period when effects from
undiscovered particles would
have been felt most strongly
(see “Missing Lithium”, left).
In our current understanding,
as the universe expanded, dark

Weaker brakes
But if some mass was trapped in
light, fast-moving particles, dark
energy would have won even
more quickly. That’s because
as the universe expanded,
stretching space would have
shifted the particles to lower
energies, weakening their pull.
Adding this ingredient into
the standard account of the
early universe could bring the
modern and primitive expansion
rates back in line – not because
the foot on the accelerator was
heavier than expected, but
because back then the brakes
were a little weaker.
There may be a chance that
we have already glimpsed a dark
radiation particle. For years, we

Friedland at the Stanford Linear
Accelerator in California. “They
have their own interactions, and
they are part of some hidden
sector – some world which exists
right under our noses but interacts
with our world extremely weakly.”
If so, such neutrinos could be
the missing ingredient. And
through neutrino experiments
and ever-better studies of the
early universe, we might know
within the next decade if a hidden
sector of particles offers a way out.
“This is where we are,”
Friedland says. “There are hints,
and they will be tested.” ■

MIKE SEGAR/REUTERS

energy filled the space formed,
with matter becoming more
dilute. Through a war of attrition,
the outward-pushing dark energy
came to dominate matter.

A CANINE conundrum solved?
It looks as if dogs emerged from
not one, but two wolf families at
opposite ends of Eurasia.
Debate has raged for years over
whether man’s best friend came from
Europe or Asia, with genetic studies
finding conflicting results. It now
appears that both camps may be right.
Laurent Frantz at the University of
Oxford and his colleagues constructed
an evolutionary timeline by comparing
the complete genome of a 4800-yearold dog skull from Ireland and
mitochondrial DNA samples from
59 ancient dogs that lived up to
14,000 years ago, with genomes
of more than 600 modern pooches
from across Eurasia.
The results show that dogs
originated from two separate wolf
populations in the eastern and
western halves of Eurasia. Then,
between 14,000 and 6400 years
–I see it!– ago, people brought Asian dogs
westwards, where they partially
have seen hints of so-called
replaced their European counterparts.
This mixing of lineages is the reason
“sterile” neutrinos, which would
interact with gravity and the three why past genetic studies have been
difficult to interpret, says Frantz.
known neutrinos, but little else.
“It would have blurred the signal.”
Vexingly, measurements rule
Few modern dogs have pure
out the simplest version of sterile
neutrinos as our missing particle. European or Asian roots, the study
shows. An example of a breed with
But there may be room for
largely Asian lineage is the Tibetan
something stranger still.
mastiff, while German shepherds are
“Let’s say these neutrinos are
closely aligned to ancient European
not truly sterile,” says Alexander

dogs (Science, doi.org/bjmp).
Mietje Germonpré at the Royal
Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences
in Brussels says the dual-origin theory
is plausible. “It reconciles two
hypotheses – that dogs were either
domesticated in Europe and the Middle
East or in the Far East,” she says.
The theory is also consistent with
archaeological evidence. Ancient dog
remains from more than 12,000 years

“New genetic evidence now
reconciles two opposing
views on the origins of
domestic dogs”
ago have been found towards the
eastern and western ends of Eurasia,
but not in the middle. “Combined with
our DNA analyses, this observation
suggests that two distinct
populations of dogs were present in
eastern and western Eurasia during
the Palaeolithic period,” says Frantz.
It is still unclear how dogs became
domesticated. It’s not as simple as
Palaeolithic people choosing to take
wolf pups into their camps and trying
to domesticate them, Franz says.
“Domestication was most likely a
long-term phenomenon that started as
a natural-selection process, whereby
wolves that were less wary of humans
were more likely to come closer to
camps and become domesticated.”
Alice Klein ■

–Who gets the better deal?–
11 June 2016 | NewScientist | 9

THIS WEEK

Hobbit ancestors
found on Flores
HAVE we found the ancestors of
Homo floresiensis, aka the hobbit?
Perhaps. A new cache of hobbitlike remains uncovered on the
island of Flores answers at least
some questions in the decadelong quest to understand the
identity and origins of this tiny
ancient hominin.
The hobbit stood about 1 metre
tall and the single skull found so
far had a braincase no larger than
a chimpanzee’s. It lived around
190,000 to 50,000 years ago. One
idea is that it evolved from a small
species like H. habilis; another
that a group of larger H. erectus
reached Flores about 1 million
years ago only to shrink because
of peculiar conditions on the
island. Or the hobbit may be a
small-bodied member of our own
species, with the single small skull
just the result of disease.
The new remains – six teeth,
a fragment of jawbone and a tiny
piece of skull – don’t settle the
issue, but Yousuke Kaifu at
Tokyo’s National Museum of
Nature and Science and his
colleagues think the fossils back
the shrunken H. erectus theory.
The 700,000-year-old fossils

Thank your
genes for some
of your success
NEXT time you’re celebrating an
achievement, you’d better toast
your genes as well as your supportive
spouse. Subtle variations across
the genome can go a small way to
predicting how likely a person is to
have a prestigious job, a high income
and a likeable personality – in short,
to be successful.
10 | NewScientist | 11 June 2016

were collected in the So’a Basin on
Flores, which was an African-like
savannah at the time. The
similarities with the hobbit are
striking, say Kaifu. In particular,
the jawbone, which the team says
belonged to an adult – as the
wisdom tooth it once housed had
fully erupted – is just as small as
its hobbit equivalents (Nature,
DOI: 10.1038/nature17999).
“I was stunned by the extreme
smallness of these fossils,”
says Kaifu.
If the fossils are, in fact, older
members of the hobbit lineage,
then Flores seems to have been
their home for hundreds of
thousands of years. This means

KINEZ RIZA

Colin Barras

–If the jaw fits...–

the hobbit has a much deeper
evolutionary history than we
thought, says Bernard Wood at the
George Washington University in
Washington DC.
So where did it come from
originally? Kaifu’s team says
the new jawbone has the
characteristically thin, vertical
shape of H. erectus – as opposed to
the thicker, slightly curved shape

The lost world of the hobbits
The tiny ancient humans are now thought to have lived on the
Indonesian island of Flores at least 700,000 years ago

Flores Sea

New remains found
in So’a Basin

FLORES

First hobbit remains found
in caves at Liang Bua, 2003

Daniel Belsky at Duke University
in Durham, North Carolina, has been
looking at data on 918 New Zealanders
whose lives have been recorded in
detail since they were born.
The research builds on a 2013
study looking at the genetic profiles
of 126,000 people. It compared these
with the highest level of education
each person achieved. Researchers
found thousands of genetic variations
that together offered a way of
calculating a “polygenic score” that
accounted for 2 per cent of the
variation in educational attainment.

Savu Sea

When Belsky and his colleagues
looked at the genetic profiles of the
New Zealanders, they found those
with higher polygenic scores not
only did better educationally, but
achieved more in other ways. By the
age of 38, they had more prestigious
occupations, higher incomes, more
assets and were better at managing
their finances.

“People with higher scores
were more likeable and
friendly, but not happier
or healthier”

typical of H. habilis jawbones.
“The evidence definitely tips the
scale towards a close relationship
with early Javanese Homo
erectus,” says team member Gerrit
van den Bergh at the University of
Wollongong, Australia.
But not everyone is convinced
that H. erectus could have shrunk
from perhaps 170 centimetres to
just 1 metre, and shed about half
its adult brain volume in such a
short time. Robert Martin at the
Field Museum in Chicago thinks
we need to uncover a second tiny
skull before he can even accept
that the hobbit is a distinct
species. The new skull fragment
is too small to be informative –
so his scepticism remains.
The find is likely to refocus the
fossil hunt on the So’a Basin in the
hope that many more fossils from
around 1 million years ago will be
discovered there, boosting our
understanding of this chapter in
early human evolution. ■

The relationship held regardless of
level of education or socio-economic
status. People with higher scores
were also more likeable and friendly,
but not happier or healthier
(Psychological Science, doi.org/bjmj).
It’s important to respect genetic
scores, says Robert Plomin at King’s
College London. “When kids don’t do
well, we blame their teachers and
parents, but kids vary genetically.
[A low polygenic score] doesn’t
mean a kid can’t learn, but we should
recognise that it might take more
effort.” Jessica Hamzelou ■

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ONOKY - PHOTONONSTOP / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

THIS WEEK

Leaping eels
deliver electric
shock in mid-air

Stem cells repair
stroke damage
Andy Coghlan

showed improvements. Their
scores on a 100-point scale for
evaluating mobility – with 100
being completely mobile –
improved on average by 11.4
points, a margin considered
to make a real difference to
people’s quality of life. “The most
dramatic improvements were
in strength, coordination, ability
to walk, the ability to use hands
and the ability to communicate,
especially in those whose
speech had been damaged by
the stroke,” says Steinberg.

PEOPLE once dependent on
wheelchairs following a stroke
are walking again after receiving
injections of stem cells into their
brains. Participants in the small
trial also saw improvements in
their speech and arm movements.
“One 71-year-old woman could
only move her left thumb at the
start of the trial,” says Gary
Steinberg, a neurosurgeon at
Stanford University who was part
of the team that performed the
procedure on 18 participants.
“One woman could only
“She can now walk and lift her
move her left thumb... She
arm above her head.”
can now walk and lift her
Run by SanBio of Mountain
arm above her head”
View, California, the trial is the
second to test whether stem cell
injections into peoples’ brains
Steinberg injected genetically
can help ease disabilities resulting modified stem cells into regions
from a stroke. Volunteers in the
of the brain that control motor
first trial, carried out by UK
movements, which had been
company ReNeuron, also showed
damaged by the stroke. Each
measurable reductions in
participant received either 2.5,
disability a year after receiving
5 or 10 million cells.
their injections and beyond.
The injected material consisted
Everybody in the latest trial
of mesenchymal stem cells taken
12 | NewScientist | 11 June 2016

MORE than 200 years ago, naturalist
Alexander von Humboldt recounted
seeing electric eels leaping out of the
water to attack horses in the Amazon.
The story was thought to be an
exaggeration – nobody else had
witnessed a similar assault. Until now.
Kenneth Catania from Vanderbilt
University in Nashville, Tennessee,
saw the eels jumping when he used
a net to transfer them to a different
tank in his lab. “Sometimes up to half
of their body rises out of the water,”
he says. “This isn’t something electric
–Brain injections could help– eels typically do.”
He initially thought the eels
were trying to avoid the net, but
from the bone marrow of
then noticed that they kept their
two healthy donors. SanBio
chin in contact with it during a leap.
engineered the cells to possess
So he decided to record their electric
a gene called Notch1, which
pulses by placing a conductive rod
activates factors that help brain
development in infants. Previous in an aquarium. He then dunked
a fake alligator head laced with LEDs
studies in rats revealed that the
into a tank, which would light up if
engineered stem cells disappear
the eels shocked it.
within a month, but not before
When the eels jumped onto the
secreting growth factors that
alligator head, the current it received
build connections between brain
increased as the eels slithered higher
cells and spawn the growth of
up, maintaining the contact between
new blood vessels to nourish
the tip of their electric organ and their
brain tissue.
target (PNAS, doi.org/bjnr).
“We think the cells change the
The eels have only a single
adult brain so that it’s more like
high-voltage setting, so can’t tweak
a baby’s brain, which repairs
the power output. To provide a greater
very well,” says Steinberg. “They
shock, they seem to be delivering an
are secreting all sorts of growth
attack directly, instead of sending a
factors, which aid repair, and
current through the water. “It seems
which also alter the immune
system to get rid of inflammation clear that the eels are actively
keeping contact with their chin to
that otherwise obstructs repair.”
try to target the object they see as
In the ReNeuron trial, people
a threat,” says Catania.
received neural stem cells
“It is a beautiful example of how
extracted from the brains of
the eel has evolved a fairly simple
aborted fetuses, then multiplied
behaviour that exploits the basic
to produce larger amounts.
physics of electricity,” says Bruce
Shamim Quadir, a spokesman
for the UK Stroke Association, says Carlson of Washington University
in St Louis.
the latest trial “adds to a growing
Catania thinks the behaviour is an
body of early clinical evidence
adaption to life in the Amazon, where
suggesting stem cell treatment
could promote recovery in people water retreats during the dry season,
leaving eels trapped in small bodies
months, even years, after having
of water and exposed to predators.
a stroke, bringing hope to many
Sandrine Ceurstemont ■
living with a disability.” ■

A truly unique expedition to the Canadian high Arctic with astronaut
Chris Hadfield. Travel by icebreaker to secluded areas and encounter
epic landscapes, remarkable Inuit communities and unique wildlife

NIGEL MCCALL/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

22 AUGUST – 8 SEPTEMBER 2016
BAFFIN BAY
AND BEYOND

LAND OF THE
MIDNIGHT SUN

OUT-OF-THISWORLD COMPANY

You’ll be staying on the Kapitan Khlebnikov
icebreaker accessing remote, ice-choked
regions that ordinary ships dare not
navigate. Experience what it’s like to battle
through some of the toughest ice in the
world. Enjoy aerial views of petrified forests
and sweeping landscapes from the ship’s
two on-board helicopters. Excursions to
iceberg-filled fjords on Zodiac boats will
give you memories to treasure forever.

On shore, you’ll visit Arctic deserts,
breathtaking fjords and traditional
communities. Enjoy hikes across the tundra,
which comes alive during the brief summer
months. Discover how giant meteorites
kickstarted the region’s Iron Age. Learn
about the valiant explorers who gave their
lives searching for the Northwest Passage.
Watch out for magnificent seabirds, walrus
and polar bears.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield shot to worldwide
fame in September 2013 when he performed
Space Oddity on the International Space
Station. During various missions, totalling
166 days, he helped to run scientific
experiments and walked in space twice. On
this trip, he hosts a science-based variety
show that blends knowledge, music and
comedy as well as providing a glimpse into
the adventures of an astronaut.

How the hipster chicken
got its handsome beard
THE hipster chicken’s secret is out: now we know how it
got its beard. “The Huiyang bearded chicken is a famous
local breed,” says Xiaoxiang Hu at the China Agricultural
University in Beijing.
When Hu and his colleagues searched for the genes
that control the development of beards in chickens, they
found that a complex mutation switches on the HoxB8
gene in the skin cells of a chicken’s chin (PLoS Genetics,
doi.org/bjkd). The gene makes them grow long feathers
to form a handsome beard. They also develop mutton
chops called “muffs” to go along with it.

Hox genes are famous for their role in regulating spine
and limb growth in animals from fish to the great apes.
If HoxB8 controls feathers on these chickens’ faces, it’s
possible that Hox genes are responsible for more than
just an animal’s basic body plan, says Cheng-Ming Chuong
at the University of Southern California.
Perhaps some control external body characteristics
like skin and feathers, says Chuong, including the
plumage of showy species such as birds of paradise
and peacocks. Previous studies showed that some
Hox genes guide hair development in mice.
It could also mean that those genes guide patterns
of skin and hair in humans, too. “I think Hox genes are
a good candidate,” he says. “Humans really are not that
different from chickens.”

Lens is thinner than the light it bends
IT MIGHT be small, but it’s a very
big deal. A lens built from lightwarping metamaterials is thinner
than the waves of light it focuses.
In a normal lens, a curved glass
surface a few millimetres or even
centimetres thick redirects light
rays to a common focal point.
To improve the image, you have
to keep adding glass layers.
Metamaterials, by contrast,
can bend light towards a common
14 | NewScientist | 11 June 2016

point using structures that are
as small or smaller than the
wavelengths of the light waves
themselves. “Our lens is flat, but
I call it virtual curvature,” says
Reza Khorasaninejad, who
designed the new lens with a
team at Harvard University.
Using a beam of electrons,
the team carved “nanofins” –
600-nanometre-tall blocks that
together resemble the world’s

smallest Stonehenge – out of a
block of titanium dioxide. Across
that lens, the nanofins are rotated
at different angles to catch the
polarised light, which lets them
pull light rays together.
They tested three lenses, tuned
to red, green, and violet light.
Each could focus light more
sharply than a 55-mm-thick Nikon
microscope lens with similar
optical properties (Science, doi.
org/bjkb). The next step is to
expand the lens’s colour range.

A STAR is what it eats. Consuming
a planet or two early in its life may
explain why some young stars are
iron-rich – and those habits can
change its colour.
Emanuele Tognelli and Pier
Giorgio Prada Moroni at the
University of Pisa compared what
happens when planets of various
sizes – from Earth-like to 50 times
more massive – get enveloped by
the outer layer of a young star.
The simulations showed that
swallowing one or more planets
containing iron is enough to
change the chemical make-up of
the star, giving it a reddish tint –
similar to how flamingos become
pinker with every shrimp they
slurp (arxiv.org/abs/1605.07920).
Since this happens early on in a
star’s evolution, it’s hard to say if
more mature stars had planeteating habits in their youth. But
it’s possible that our sun ate one
or more planets long ago, the
team says.

Desert plant loves a
tipple – from the air
TAKE a leaf out of this book.
A common desert moss sucks
water directly out of the air
instead of from the ground. The
discovery could be used to inspire
ways of collecting clean drinking
water in developing countries.
Most desert plants, including
cacti, rely on extensive root
systems to mop up scarce
groundwater. But the desert moss
Syntrichia caninervis collects fresh
water straight from the
atmosphere.
Tiny fibres attached to the
tips of the moss leaves, known
as awns, allow S. caninervis to
harvest fog and mist droplets,
says Tadd Truscott of Utah State
University, who filmed the plant’s
drinking behaviour (Nature
Plants, doi.org/bjm2).

For new stories every day, visit newscientist.com/news

JUSTIN+LAUREN

IT’S a curious case of a fading
giraffe. Zoe Muller at the
Rothschild’s Giraffe Project has
reported the first known case of
an adult wild giraffe turning white.
“I first started to see a few white
spots appear on the animal’s coat
back in November 2009, and was
puzzled as I had never seen this
before,” says Muller, who studied
the giraffe in the Soysambu
Conservancy in Kenya. Over the
next six years Muller saw the white
patches grow and spread (African
Journal of Ecology, doi.org/bjkf).
“There has never been a
documented case of a giraffe
turning white over time.”
The skin condition is called
vitiligo, where the skin gradually
loses its pigment. The condition
affects people, too, and Michael
Jackson is thought to have had it.
In the case of the giraffe, Muller
thinks a skin infection might be to
blame, as the giraffe had been
scratching itself excessively
before it started changing colour.
The giraffe is alive and well, and
appears to be unaffected by its
unusual skin colour.
But Muller fears that such an
infection – should it spread – could
have a serious impact upon the
survival of the Rothschild’s giraffe
subspecies, of which there are only
1100 left in the wild. It could reduce
their camouflage, for example.

Trojan horse virus turns failing livers into healthy organs
FROM foe to friend. A modified
virus can repair diseased livers
by turning bad cells into good
ones. The method could one day
offer a lifeline to thousands of
people with liver failure.
The treatment targets liver
fibrosis, the progressive
scarring of the liver that leads
to organ failure. Fibrosis occurs
when healthy cells called
hepatocytes are damaged by
alcohol and disease. The gaps
left by these cells are filled with
myofibroblasts, which generate
scar tissue from collagen.

Eventually, the liver can’t generate
new hepatocytes quickly enough
to counteract the scar tissue
damage, and the organ fails.
Holger Willenbring of the
University of California, San
Francisco, and his colleagues have
worked out a way to transform
myofibroblasts into healthy
hepatocytes using a cocktail of
liver gene switches called
transcription factors.
They packed the transcription
factors inside an adeno-associated
virus, and used it like a Trojan
horse to get inside the

myofibroblasts in mice with liver
damage. Once inside, the virus
spits out the transcription factors,
which transform the cells into
hepatocytes.
The treatment increased the
number of healthy cells, and
reduced the collagen content of
the rodents’ livers by about a
third – improving liver function
(Cell Stem Cell, doi.org/bjkc).
“We think the combination of
making more hepatocytes and
reducing collagen is the most
promising approach to treating
liver fibrosis,” says Willenbring.
NASA/GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATION STUDIO

Wild giraffe turns
ghostly white

Brain drain makes
you act on impulse
WE’VE all been there: after a tough
mental slog, your brain feels as
knackered as your body does after
a hard workout.
Now we may have pinpointed
one of the brain regions worn out
by a mentally taxing day and it
seems to also affect our willpower,
so perhaps we should avoid
making important decisions
when mentally fatigued.
In a small trial, Bastien Blain
at INSERM in Paris and his
colleagues asked volunteers to
spend six hours doing tricky
memory tasks, while periodically
choosing either a small sum of
cash now, or a larger amount
after a delay.
As the day progressed, people
became more likely to act on
impulse and to pick an immediate
reward. This didn’t happen in the
groups that spent time doing
easier memory tasks, reading or
gaming. For those engaged in
difficult work, fMRI brain scans
showed a decrease in activity
in the middle frontal gyrus, a
brain region involved in decisionmaking (PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/
pnas.1520527113). If this area is
becoming less excitable, that
could impair people’s ability to
delay gratification, says Blain.

Rocks hold Mars’s methane hostage
IT COULD be a blow for those who
believe there’s life on the Red Planet.
Spongy minerals at the surface, not
living organisms, could be releasing
Mars’s mysterious methane.
Methane gas, which chiefly
emerges from biological processes,
was identified on Mars in 2003.
Because it doesn’t hang around for
long, something must still have
been producing it.
But a new study is hypothesising
that the methane is actually very old
and has been locked away, perhaps
for billions of years, occasionally
pulsing into the atmosphere.

Olivier Mousis at the Marseille
Observatory in France and his
colleagues suggest that the methane
is being stored in a reservoir of
zeolites: sponge-like minerals with
microscopic holes and channels that
easily trap and release gases (arxiv.
org/abs/1605.07579).
On Earth, these form in volcanic
rocks or materials, such as ash
exposed to water. Evidence suggests
the Red Planet had a watery past,
so it’s reasonable to expect that it
supported zeolites, too – although
despite 30 years of searching, we
haven’t found any yet.

11 June 2016 | NewScientist | 15

ANALYSIS WRITING OUR GENOME

Synthetic humans are go
“WHAT I cannot create, I do not
base pairs, including “whole
understand.” Last week, 25 leading genome engineering of human
synthetic biologists decided it was cell lines and other organisms
time to follow Richard Feynman’s of agricultural and public
famous credo.
health significance”, the team
After nearly two decades spent
writes. This will require
poring over the 3 billion letters
technological development
or base pairs that make up the
early on in the project “to propel
human genome, they announced
“You could use this plain
a 10-year plan to chemically
yogurt of humanity to
synthesise one. “Reading the
slot in different genes
genome can only get you so far.
and find out what they do”
At some point you have to build
it,” says Susan Rosser of the
Mammalian Synthetic Biology
large-scale genome design
Research Centre at the University
and engineering” (Science,
of Edinburgh, UK, and a co-author doi.org/bjmv).
on the paper outlining the plan.
The artificial genome won’t
The team, which counts among be derived from any one person,
its leaders the maverick geneticist but will be created using
George Church, says it is aiming
computer-aided design – one of
to launch the ambitious initiative the main players is software
this year, depending on raising
company Autodesk. Chunks of
an initial £100 million.
synthetic DNA could then be put
The primary goal of the Human into cell lines, like those used to
Genome Project-Write, as it is
test drugs, or into E.coli bacteria,
the workhorse of the research lab,
known, is to engineer large
with the host genetic material
genomes of up to 100 billion

AN ALMIGHTY LEAP
The project to create an artiicial human genome will build on
previous work to construct synthetic genomes
REWRITING
BAKER’S YEAST
Sc2.0 is an international attempt to
recreate the genome of baker’s yeast,
Saccharomyces cerevisiae, one of the
first organisms to be sequenced.
The yeast genome is tiny: just 12
million base pairs on 16 chromosomes,
compared with the 3 billion base pairs
of the human genome spread over
23 chromosomes. The project should
address some previously unanswerable
questions, such as how transposons –
“jumping genes” that insert
themselves in DNA – evolve. The
project is expected to finish in 2018.
16 | NewScientist | 11 June 2016

CRAIG VENTER’S
ARTIFICIAL BACTERIA
In 2010, a team led by Craig Venter
reported that it had synthesised
the only chromosome of the
bacterium Mycoplasma mycoides
and transplanted it into an empty
chassis of a separate strain of
Mycoplasma.
Earlier this year, the team
announced that it had whittled
down the 901 genes of the synthetic
bacterium to the minimum needed to
support life. Of these essential genes,
we have no idea what 31 per cent of
them do.

gradually being replaced.
While difficult to put a figure
on the cost at this stage, the team
says it expects the final bill to be
less than the $3-billion cost of the
first Human Genome Project.
But what’s the point of such a
lofty proposal? To entice funders,
the team has outlined several
pilot projects that will take
advantage of the progress as it
is made. Those discussed in the
paper include the development
of an ultra-safe line of cells that
would be virus resistant, cancer
resistant and free of potentially
harmful genes that could lead,
for example, to prion diseases.
That would be a boon for stem
cell medicine, says Paul Freemont,
who runs the synthetic biology
centre at Imperial College London.
One of the benefits of stem-cell
therapies is that the cells can
multiply rapidly – but this is also
a characteristic shared by cancer
cells, so a therapeutic injection of
stem cells turning cancerous has
long been a concern. “A synthetic
biology variant encoded to never
become cancerous would be
preferable,” he says.
Other projects include finding
the minimal human genome –
the tiniest possible stash of DNA
capable of supporting life – and
adapting the pig genome so it
becomes a better source of organs
for human transplants.
There’s also a proposal to
develop a reference human
genome. This would consist of
the most common gene variants
that humans carry at every single
position of the genome. It could
be used to make a cell that has a
generalised genome that most
accurately represents the baseline
genetic code of the majority of the
human race.

EPA/MICHAEL REYNOLDS

What’s the point of building the entire human genome
from scratch? Sally Adee investigates

Church calls the genome
this would create a totally plain
human. “If you had this, you can
introduce variants of unknown
significance one at a time. These
are turning up constantly in
genome research but you don’t
know if the variants are causal,
or how many it takes [to cause
disease],” he says. “You could use
this blank slate, this plain yogurt
of humanity, to slot in the
different genes and find out”.
This could help identify why
some populations are more
susceptible to certain diseases,
for example sickle cell anaemia,
which is more common in people
of African, African American or
Mediterranean heritage. “This
would be a way of finding out
why,” says Freemont.
Some see darker applications,
however. “Some of the speculative

large-scale production-oriented
‘HGP-Write’ effort,” he said in a
statement.
Then there’s the question of
who would own the synthesised
genome. Unlike existing DNA
that has been manipulated, a
wholly synthetic cell could be
owned outright. This could
benefit any corporations involved.
“If you process it in your lab, it is
yours, you can patent it,” says
Laurie Zoloth, a bioethicist at
Northwestern University in
Evanston, Illinois.

Genome owner
“In the first Human Genome
Project, it was clear that the
knowledge gained would be
owned by everyone – anyone
can download and use the
information,” says Freemont.
“But it’s less clear how that will
work with this project – this will
not be digital information, this
will be a physical entity… It’s an
issue that hasn’t been sorted out.”
Rosser says that is exactly the
discussion the team’s paper is
intended to catalyse.
But not everyone is placated by
–No easy task, ethically or technically the authors’ talk of “responsible
innovation”. Zoloth and Drew
goals of this project sound
it doesn’t state clearly what
Endy, a synthetic biologist at
innocuous or benign…
potential risks or ethical
Stanford University, say the
Others would be dangerously
quandaries the project might
authors fail to pose essential
unacceptable,” said Marcy
raise, says Baojun Wang, also at
questions in their proposal.
Darnovsky, who heads the
the University of Edinburgh. More “Nor do they detail specific
California-based Center for
justifiable reasons than those
limits about what should not
Genetics and Society, in a
given in the paper – namely that it be done.” This raises the question
statement. In an interview with
would deliver important scientific of whether the group is well
US radio station NPR, she said:
equipped to organise and lead
“The worry is that we’re going to “The worry is that it could
such a project, the pair say.
be used to produce
be synthesising entire optimised
Church says that people are
human genomes – manufacturing synthetic humans they
working to make sure certain
see as improved models”
chromosomes that could be used
actions cannot be carried out.
ultimately to produce synthetic
As an example, he points to the
advances and reduce the cost of
human beings that they see as
now widely implemented safety
genetic engineering – are needed
improved models.”
standards he devised in 2004 to
to start the HGP-Write project,
While there is no suggestion
prevent DNA being used to make
he says. “The investment is huge
that the artificial DNA sequence
biohazardous material.
and long-term and will involve
created by the project would be
What is certain is that there is
governmental taxpayers money.” still plenty of time to get things
put into a human egg or embryo,
Francis Collins, director of the
allowing the creation of a human
in order. With just a few groups
from scratch, the paper doesn’t do US National Institutes of Health,
capable of writing genomes with
much to allay these fears. While it agrees. “NIH has not considered
millions of bases, the synthetic
the time to be right for funding a
mentions ethical considerations,
human is a long way off. ■

UNCERTAIN AMBITION
The Human Genome Project–Write
was generating controversy before
it was even officially announced.
On 10 May, team members held
an invitation-only meeting at
Harvard University. Attendees
were barred from speaking with
the press, leaving people to guess
at the applications of the rumoured
project. This led to suggestions of
using “the synthetic genome to
create human beings without
biological parents”.
The reality will be less
sensational but just as radical, says
geneticist George Church at Harvard,
one of the leaders of the project.
“We are not well suited to 60-mile
commutes, a super-abundance of
food, and certainly not for being
astronauts,” says Church.
Knowledge gleaned from this
project could, for example, switch
off the genes that make us
susceptible to type 2 diabetes.
While the descriptions of the
applications (see main story) seem
uncontroversial enough, greater
ambitions may lurk behind them.
“There has been a ratcheting down
of the rhetoric of the project [since
10 May],” says Hank Greely of the
Stanford Centre for Law and the
Biosciences. “But whether there’s
been a ratcheting down of the plans,
I don’t know”.
Clues may lie in its leaders’
wider interests. During
presentations, for example,
Church likes to show a slide on which
he lists naturally occurring variants
of around 10 genes that give
people extraordinary qualities or
resistance to disease.
Andrew Hessel of software
company Autodesk, who first
proposed the human genome
synthesis project in 2012, is a
lecturer at think-tank Singularity
University, which explicitly tries
to adapt to a future in which
technology outpaces biology. Hessel
has often spoken of his plans to
make genetic engineering into an
accessible “programming language”,
using Autodesk software.

11 June 2016 | NewScientist | 17

COMMENT

Climate denial’s Trump card
A Donald Trump presidency would disrupt the fight against global
warming, threatening to snuff out all hope, warns Matthew Nisbet
DONALD TRUMP’s promise
to “cancel the Paris climate
agreement”, end US funding for
United Nations climate change
programmes, and roll back
“stupid” Obama administration
regulations to cut power plant
emissions should worry us all.
The Republican presidential
candidate has often defied party
orthodoxy, but his scripted
speech to an oil industry meeting
directly echoed the party line
on climate change and energy –
probably reflecting a desire to
win industry funding for his
campaign and boost voter
support in oil, gas and coal states.
Republicans sceptical about
anthropogenic global warming
are nothing new. Yet a Trump
presidency poses an existential
threat to efforts to combat climate
change that are qualitatively
different from past candidates.
It could set in motion a wave of

political and economic crises,
creating turmoil that would
fatally disrupt efforts to tackle
this issue.
Alarmed by the possibility
of a Trump victory in November,
international negotiators are
urgently working to finalise the
UN Paris agreement, in the hope
that it can become legally binding
before President Obama leaves
office. Yet even if this succeeds,
a Trump victory could cripple
progress in other ways.
To meet the Paris targets,
countries will have to ratchet
up efforts to end reliance on
fossil fuels over the next few
years. Just when the world needs
US leadership on this, Trump’s
incoherence on climate and
energy and disgust for global
collaboration would have a
chilling effect on progress. The
broader disruption of a Trump
presidency would do even greater

A virtual certainty?
Elon Musk says our universe is a simulation.
Are we all code now, wonders Geraint Lewis
ARE we, and the universe we are
in, a simulation? SpaceX chief
Elon Musk thinks there is a tiny
billions-to-one chance that we
actually exist physically, and it is
much more likely that we are data
swirling around on someone’s
supercomputer. What leads him
to this strange conclusion?
Musk is immersed in a
18 | NewScientist | 11 June 2016

technological world that has
advanced rapidly, and it seems
inevitable to him that a
functioning human brain,
consciousness and all, will exist
within a computer in the not too
distant future. With the growth in
computing power over the next
few millennia, this first lonely
brain will be joined by many

more in a computed universe.
Maybe this has already
happened and we are in someone
else’s synthetic universe. There
are some intriguing properties of
the universe that make us ponder
this possibility, in particular the
masses of fundamental particles,
such as electrons and quarks, and
the strengths of the forces that
dictate their interactions.
Growing evidence tells us that
if the universe had been born with
masses and forces only slightly

“Are we only here because
some higher dimensional
programmer fine-tuned
our fundamental laws?”

different to the ones we have,
the results would have been
catastrophic, with a dead and
sterile cosmos. Perhaps we are
only here because some higher
dimensional programmer “finetuned” our fundamental laws.
But how would we know? There
might be subtle clues. If their
computers are like ours, then they
rely on numbers with finite digits,
which would result in coarse
graining of space and time rather
than a smooth continuum. We
could look for this. Alternatively,
we could search for glitches and
bugs, places where the program
is not behaving properly. But in
both cases, we might just treat

For more opinion articles, visit newscientist.com/opinion

Matthew Nisbet is professor of
communication at Northeastern
University in Boston

these as new “features” of the
universe and include them in
our fundamental laws.
Of course, the notion of a
simulated universe gives rise to
many philosophical questions,
not least on free will. What if we
are just unintended consequences
in a simulation run for some other
purpose? And what happens if the
computer loses power?
Science offers no definite
answers, and Musk’s odds are
little more than wishful thinking.
But at the moment, they are as
good as anyone else’s. ■
Geraint Lewis is a professor of
astrophysics at the University of Sydney

INSIGHT Olympic threat

MARIO TAMA/GETTY

damage, weakening efforts to
create a sense of urgency over
climate change.
His candidacy has brought
public discourse in the US to
its ugliest level, as he trades
in trash talk and outrageous
insults, spreading falsehood and
innuendo, fomenting bigotry and
prejudice. His success emboldens
far right and ultra-nationalist
movements in the US and across
Europe, risking destabilisation.
At home, Trump’s promise to
ban Muslims from entering the
US, to build a wall at the Mexican
border, and to deport millions of
immigrants will spark widespread
protest and civil unrest.
Abroad, his bravado and
reckless unpredictability, his vow
to renegotiate trade deals and to
walk away from security alliances
will generate tensions with China,
Russia and Europe, risking
financial collapse and conflict.
In the midst of such
dysfunction and upheaval, the
glimmer of hope offered by the
historic climate change pact
agreed to in Paris last year may
fade forever. The stakes in a US
presidential election have never
been higher. ■

–Just weeks left to prepare–

WeneedtoZika-proof
theRioOlympics
Debora MacKenzie

to be going home to somewhere with
the right mosquitoes.
Critics of the WHO’s approach argue
that the Olympics attract a richer
national and social mix than the norm
for air travel: almost every country
sends people, and not all go home to
the mosquito-proofed lives of typical
jet-setters. That could make it more
likely that one person could repeat
what happened in Brazil in Dhaka or
Addis Ababa. And August is mosquito
season in the northern hemisphere.
That said, the risk of catching Zika
in Rio will certainly diminish between
now and August. The southern-

SHOULD the Olympic Games go
ahead in Rio de Janeiro, despite Brazil’s
Zika epidemic? Last week, 200 health
experts called on the World Health
Organization to recommend moving
the Games, or delaying them until
the virus is under control.
The WHO argues that Zika is already
present in many countries, and people
with the virus in their blood are already
flying to uninfected nations that have
the Aedes mosquitoes able to transmit
it. Pregnant women should avoid Rio,
says the organisation, but stopping
other people from travelling to the
“Should we delay or move
Olympics won’t make a dent in the
the Games? I suspect
existing viral tourism.
it won’t happen, so we
This argument is weak. The DNA
need to cut the risk”
evidence shows the epidemic in Brazil
was started by one traveller carrying
Zika. That means just one person
hemisphere winter will slow viral
could cause an outbreak somewhere
replication in mosquitoes: Zika petered
else with the right mosquitoes.
out in Rio last August. Many in the
It doesn’t matter that Rio is only one state have also now been exposed to
of many Zika-affected destinations –
the virus, and their immunity will slow
especially as many of the rest aren’t
its spread. In addition, the campaign to
nearly so badly infected. It may matter spray Rio with pesticide since February
far more that travellers to the Games
will have had some effect.
are on average more likely than normal
But the risk won’t be zero. So how

much is too much? The country has
spent some $11 billion on the Games –
a huge investment to lose, even in
part, to address the unmeasurable risk
of hastening Zika’s spread elsewhere.
Brazil was on a roll when it bid for the
Olympics, but has since been hit hard
by falling oil prices, never mind the
cost of the Games and of Zika itself.
The WHO, and governments, have
in effect covered their backs: visitors
have been told how to avoid catching
and spreading Zika, so now it’s their
responsibility not to get infected.
But everyone knows that insect
repellent and condoms won’t be
100 per cent effective. Some Olympic
visitors will get the virus, some could
carry it somewhere vulnerable, and
we can’t really say how likely that is.
Should we delay or move the Games?
I suspect at this point it just isn’t going
to happen, so we need to cut the risk
as much as possible.
Someone – are you listening, World
Bank? – should give Brazil several
million small bottles of Deet-based
mosquito repellent, to be handed
out relentlessly at all Olympic venues.
A donor could also boost diagnostic
capabilities for Zika in countries where
they are lacking, to keep a lid on any
virus that does get away from Brazil
or any of the other affected countries.
And we won’t get ahead of this
virus – or the next one – until we have
a vaccine. If we spent as much on that
as we do on the Olympics, we might
not be having this problem. ■
11 June 2016 | NewScientist | 19

COME
AND SEE...
EARTH ZONE

See the future,
change the future

LIKE NO

OTHER PLACE
ON EARTH
Welcome to New Scientist Live, a four-day
festival of ideas and discovery. Here, you’ll find
the best, latest and most provocative science,
guaranteed to touch all aspects of human life

Sponsored by

WHERE ExCel London
WHEN 22 – 25 September 2016
WHAT Talks, debates, exhibits, demonstrations.
Interact with the latest technology and engage
with 100 of the world’s most original thinkers

COSMOS
THE UNIVERSE –
AND BEYOND

BRAAIN
& BO
ODY

WHAT ITT MEANS
TO BE HUMAN
H

TTECHNOLOGY
M
MAKING
TTHE FUTURE

EARTH

EXPLORING
OUR PLANET

20 | NewScientist | 11 June 2016

Engineers and architects have long built
models to see their next big creation and iron
out problems before construction starts.
Innovate UK’s Transport Systems Catapult is
taking this idea to a new level: using big data
and virtual reality to model entire cities to
gauge the impact of future changes.
The “Manchester Table” is an interactive
map of the city below which sit layers of
data about road, rail and tram networks.
The system connects everything together,
and calculates how flows of people
might change in response to road closures,
park-and-ride schemes or even innovations
like electric bikes and cars.
Planners can drop travellers – such as
families, students and business people – on to
this map who make decisions according to
their own needs and wants. As changes are
made to the future city, these “people” alter
their travel patterns, letting planners see how
their plans will play out.
Virtual reality also offers the chance to
model the future as never before. A catapult
programme has paired an Oculus Rift VR
headset with an omnidirectional treadmill to
create a rudimentary version of a Star Trek
holodeck. It enables people to walk around a
virtual model of Milton Keynes, a train station
or even architectural designs. By adding real
world data, researchers can monitor people’s
reactions to changes in crowds, traffic or
weather, for example.
The possibilities for shaping our future are
endless and intriguing.

COME
AND HEAR...

AND DON’T
MISS...

TECHNOLOGY STAGE SUNDAY 25 SEPTEMBER

HOW WE
BECAME HUMAN

How to rebuild the world from scratch

science into a mitigation strategy
for when the next big storm comes
our way,” he says.

processes that make us who we are.
Will we ever manage to find the
answer? “The only way to find out is
to try,” says Seth. Come to New
Scientist Live to hear more.

BRAIN & BODY STAGE
SUNDAY 25 SEPTEMBER

SATURDAY 24 SEPTEMBER

Prepare for the
next big solar flare
What do we do when the sun attacks?
Find out at New Scientist Live.
With terrifying unpredictability,
our local star emits massive bursts of
radiation in our direction. “Solar
storms are much more likely than
large asteroid strikes,” says
astronomer and writer Stuart Clark.
History shows they can be
devastating. The last big one hit in
September 1859, when skies turned
red and “phantom electricity” caused
sparks to fly from telegraph machines,
shocking operators and causing fires.
In today’s networked world, a
large-scale solar storm could frazzle
our communications networks and
leave us without grid power.
Our knowledge of the sun is
getting better all the time, says
Clark, but that on its own will not be
enough. “The trick is to turn this pure

EARTH STAGE

Whittling away at
‘the hard problem’

THURSDAY 22 SEPTEMBER

Time to decide
your future climate

Where does consciousness come
from? It’s a famously hard question.
Perhaps so hard that we might never
be able to get our primitive brains
around it. After all, says Anil Seth,
a neuroscientist at the University
of Sussex, even a planet’s worth of
frogs would struggle to understand
general relativity.
But as brain imaging technologies
improve, we will get ever closer to
pinpointing the complex neurological

DENIS SCOTT/TAXI/GETTY

COSMOS STAGE

“We have the power to choose very
different futures”, says Alice
Bows-Larkin, a climate scientist
at the University of Manchester.
If we keep emitting greenhouse
gases as we do now, Earth’s average
temperature could rise by a further
3°C, putting it 4°C above preindustrial levels. That would bring
heat waves, droughts, and other
extremes of weather. “Our
infrastructure is not designed to
cope with such extremes,” she says.
The UN’s Paris climate agreement,
reached in December 2015, commits
countries to limit temperature rise to
“well below 2°C” over pre-industrial
levels. Though still not ideal, it’s the
best we can hope for.
Come to New Scientist Live to
find out what each of us can do to
help us get there.

LORIAN REED-DRAKE

HANS NELEMAN/GETTY

It’s not the end of the world: just
of civilisation as we know it.
At New Scientist Live, astrobiologist
and author Lewis Dartnell from the
University of Leicester will ask: what
would be the most vital knowledge
you’d want to preserve in the event
of an apocalyptic event?
Alongside such obvious candidates
as agriculture and electricity,
Dartnell believes it’s more subtle
forms of knowledge we might miss
most. “I’d argue that it’s the notion of
germs,” he says. Without the
knowledge that disease-causing
microbes are too small to be seen, we
could be transported back to a time
when infections were blamed on
fractious gods or “bad air”.

Alice Roberts highlights the
unique traits that set our
ancestors on the road to
global domination

BEYOND THE
HIGGS BOSON
Tara Shears has the inside
story on the latest strange
signals from the Large
Hadron Collider

YOU SEEM SAD TODAY,
DAVE. CAN I HELP?
Computers that detect
your emotions are on the
way. Peter Robinson
explores their promises
and dangers

THE METEORITE IN
TUTANKHAMUN’S TOMB
There was far more to
Egyptian astronomy than
we had ever imagined.
Join Marek Kukula for a
fascinating tour

HOW TO HIJACK
A SATELLITE
Meet Keith Cowing, who
hacked a NASA space
probe 3 million kilometres
from Earth

ARE WE ALONE
IN THE UNIVERSE?
And if not, where are the
aliens hiding? Find out
from Duncan Forgan

To find out more and buy your tickets go to newscientistlive.com
or if you are in the UK call our ticket hotline on 0844 581 1295
11 June 2016 | NewScientist | 21

TECHNOLOGY

Viewed from above
Tech start-ups are taking advantage of cheap satellites to share intel on
our changing planet from space, says Hal Hodson
WE’VE long had eyes in the sky.
But now a handful of start-ups are
using these satellites to monitor
everything from flood damage to
crop yield with greater frequency
and detail than ever before.
Efforts to keep tabs on Earth
from above began with NASA’s
Landsat programme, which
started in 1973. It currently has
two satellites in orbit imaging
the whole of Earth’s surface every
16 days. The resolution is high
enough to capture major roads,
but not individual houses.
More recent satellites supply
far greater detail – and more
often. Thanks to private firms like
SpaceX, the cost of launching a
commercial satellite is also a lot
less than it used to be. But the real
breakthrough is in the computerassisted analysis that can be done
on the images. Improvements in
machine learning let us analyse
high-definition images of Earth’s
surface to gain previously
unavailable insights about our
planet and the way it is changing.
For example, Google-owned

Terra Bella offers its customers
overviews of how land is being
used around the world and
assessments of flood damage,
as well as information about the
progress of construction projects.
Other companies are using
satellites to look for landfill sites
that might be profitably mined
for valuable materials.
Astro Digital, a company based
at the NASA Ames Research Center
–Fertile territory– in Mountain View, California,
22 | NewScientist | 11 June 2016

NASA LANDSAT

For more technology stories, visit newscientist.com/technology

provides similar intel. But it
will also focus on monitoring
agricultural land – letting farmers
monitor their crops from several
hundred kilometres up.
It’s all about building tools that
mine insight from large volumes
of data, says Bronwyn Agrios at
Astro Digital. “This is not about
creating maps or pretty pictures.”
In three months, Astro Digital
will launch the first of its
Landmapper satellites on a
SpaceX rocket from Vandenberg
Air Force Base near Lompoc
in California. The company’s
set-up will eventually consist
of 30 satellites orbiting
650 kilometres above Earth.
A third of these will take images
every day at a resolution of one
pixel for every 22 square metres of
land. The rest will capture images
at a resolution nine times higher
every three to four days. The first
group will broadly identify where
changes are happening, says
Agrios. Then the more precise
sensors will zoom in and see what
is changing and how.
With its satellite launches still
a few months away, Astro Digital
has been working on its image
processing platform. To test
the system, it is using existing
free data from public satellites,
such as Landsat. The company’s
website already lets you play with
processed images of London, for

Yazbek says that farmers are
impressed by the ability to pull
insight from pictures taken from
space. Yet most just want to know
about their crops, not have to
learn how to use novel software.
So Farm will use Astro Digital’s
tools to provide farmers with
information about their crops in
a way that makes sense to them.
It will tell farmers how much
of a planted crop has emerged,
for example. It will also monitor
crop health through the growing
season, especially during periods
of high temperatures or drought.
Farm plans to start offering
its services in October. But the
–Wide open spaces– ultimate goal is to estimate crop
yield, giving farmers a sense of
rather than having a few drones
how big their harvest will be well
example. One shows built-up
watching a single plot from the
in advance.
areas in blue and grey, with open
air, satellites will be used instead.
Descartes Labs, a start-up based
spaces in red (see image above).
in New Mexico, wants to make
Over time, these regions shift.
such predictions from satellite
Once Astro Digital’s satellites are
Not missing out
data using machine learning.
in orbit, it will be possible to keep
However, for individual farmers
Last September, Descartes Labs
tabs on the ebb and flow of the
wanting to know about their
projected that US corn harvests
world’s largest cities.
farms, existing satellites aren’t
would be 2.8 per cent lower than
The company’s main focus will
quite enough. Farmers need
official estimates. A few days later
be on scanning agricultural land,
updates every few days and
the US government issued a
however. And South African
Landsat images every 16 days
slightly lower forecast – though
start-up Farm is ready to help
don’t cut it, says Yazbek. “You
not because of Descartes Labs.
farmers make the most of Astro
would keep missing the growing
At first, Astro Digital will send
Digital’s tools.
phase,” she says. But with Astro
all of its image data to Earth for
Chantal Yazbek and her team at
Digital’s satellite updates coming
processing. But Agrios says the
Farm initially looked into using
through twice a week, the tech
company plans to start processing
drones as a means of monitoring
becomes useful. “You can pick and some of it on the satellites to
land and crops, but decided that
choose what it is you want to focus save on expensive space-to-Earth
training pilots and maintaining
on in a given month.”
data transmission costs. Not
aircraft would be impractical. So
needing to send everything
down to Earth will let it capture
IN THE DARK ABOUT POVERTY
larger, more detailed data sets
Eyes in the sky can also help us learn
at night. This let them match data
as well – including information
things about humans. Night-time
about prosperity previously tied to
from other wavelengths of light
lights, viewed from space, are known light levels to physical features on
such as infrared. It will also let
to be a proxy for areas of relative
the ground instead. They could then
them filter images and dump
wealth, as they tend to trace urban
use information about houses and
ones that mostly show clouds,
areas. But in the poorest places in
roads rather than the light – or lack
for example.
the world there are few lights, so
of it – to identify poverty.
Agrios thinks that small
the technique isn’t so useful for
They found that their system
commercial satellites will
monitoring poverty. Now Michael
accurately estimated poverty levels
soon be a widespread source of
Xie and his colleagues at Stanford
in regions that don’t have electric
information. Rather than buying
University have a fix.
lighting. The researchers think that
still satellite images, people will
The researchers used machine
by providing a measure of poverty in
subscribe to a service that feeds
learning to match features visible
the world’s least visible places, their
the data stream directly into
in satellite pictures taken during
approach has the potential to help
an app, she says. “The satellite
the day with levels of lighting seen
change people’s lives for the better.
space is about to be totally
commoditised.” ■
11 June 2016 | NewScientist | 23

ONE PER CENT

Chip design quirks make
our lives more secure

BERNHARD CLAFLEN/IMAGEBROKER/SUPERSTOCK

HAS your bank recently sent you
a credit or debit card with a chip
in it? If so, you may now be in
possession of a little piece of tech
that is quietly helping to secure
the ever-expanding realm of
internet-connected devices –
which, yes, includes your card.
At least one US bank has
started supplying its customers
with cards that contain what is
known as a physically unclonable
function – or, more snappily, a
PUF. Every silicon-based chip gets
this unique fingerprint from the
way it is manufactured, and it is
almost impossible to replicate.
“It’s a biometric in a way,”
says Boris Kennes at Intrinsic-ID
in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
“Each chip is born with unique
characteristics that are completely
uncontrollable and different, just
like a fingerprint.”
Many people are concerned that
the proliferation of improperly
secured internet-connected
devices are easy targets for
hackers. If we want to live in a

24 | NewScientist | 11 June 2016

it is produced. Upon applying a
current, bits flip to a 1 or 0 state
on the basis of this arrangement –
producing a pattern that amounts
to a signature for the chip.
But just as a human fingerprint
is only a useful method for
identifying someone once you
know how to read it, the trick
with PUFs has been to harness
these production patterns for
the purposes of encryption. A
signature can be read simply by
passing electricity through the
chip – and then used to sign a
message destined for just one
place. But only recently has this
technique become accurate and
efficient enough to be built into
cheap off-the-shelf devices.

world where our fridge can order
food for us online, or where our
bath starts running when our
phone tells it we are 10 minutes
from home, then PUFs could be
a way to protect ourselves.
There are lots of systems out
there for storing encryption keys
securely, says Steve Owen at NXP
Semiconductors, which is using
PUFs supplied by Intrinsic-ID to
make secure chips in credit cards.
NXP’s chips have 112 different
security features, he says.
The best security systems at
present – such as Apple’s “secure “Like humans, every silicon
enclave”, which recently prevented chip has a fingerprint that
the FBI from accessing an iPhone – can be used to uniquely
identify it”
are expensive and complicated
works of engineering. With billions
of devices being connected to
What’s more, because a chip’s
the internet – many of which are
fingerprint is only produced when
throwaway – a low-cost alternative current is flowing, the system is
is needed. “You can’t afford to put even more secure than most
a big computational engine into
existing approaches – at least in
everything,” says Owen.
theory. Securing a device such as a
PUFs could provide an
smartphone is usually done using
answer. The alignment of silicon
a system based on digital keys
crystals in a chip is fixed when
stored on a hard drive. But there
is a small – yet real – risk of the
key being copied, even when the
device is turned off. With PUFs,
the fingerprint disappears
without the current. “When
you turn off the power, there
is nothing left,” says Kennes.
However, before becoming
widespread, PUFs must be vetted
by the security community. In
a 2012 paper, researchers from
Technische Universität Darmstadt
in Germany evaluated different
kinds of PUF. They found that
three types have features that
could make them vulnerable to
attacks that involve raising a chip’s
temperature – but not the kind
being rolled out in credit cards.
Owen says he sees the tech not
as a replacement for existing
systems, but as an additional layer
that may allow us to secure more
–Now with added fingerprints– devices more cheaply. Hal Hodson ■

Replicating replicants
The suits at Warner Bros probably
still don’t know what to make of it.
Last week the firm demanded that
streaming site Vimeo remove two
videos for violating the copyright
on 1982 film Blade Runner.
A few days later the videos were
reinstated. It turned out they
were in fact a reinterpretation of
the film produced by an artificial
intelligence. London-based
researcher Terence Broad had
showed the film to a machine
learning system, which then
reconstructed it frame by frame.

“It’s not enough to
target steps and
sleep”
Cavan Canavan, CEO of Los Angeles
start-up FocusMotion, hopes his
motion-tracking app will help people
exercise, recover from injury and
monitor use of force by the police.

Lighting the way
Keep your eyes on your phone.
Sydney has become the third city
in the world to install traffic lights
in the pavement at pedestrian
crossings. The aim is to prevent
accidents caused by someone
stepping out into traffic because
they were looking down at their
phone rather than up at the lights
at eye level. Two German cities –
Cologne and Augsburg – installed
similar lights in April.

AF ARCHIVE / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

TECHNOLOGY

A career in science,
itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not always
what you think
From movie advisor to science
festival director, where will your
science career take you?

newscientist.com/jobs

APERTURE

26 | NewScientist | 11 June 2016

Medical oddities
THEY’RE objects that have stood between us
and death. After photographer Reiner Riedler’s
newborn son spent two weeks in a neonatal unit,
he began paying closer attention to the fantastic
forms of the tools that keep patients alive.
Riedler spent five years photographing
medical equipment around Europe, from historic
prototypes that never saw a hospital to well-worn
veterans of many procedures.
Rather than take photos of devices in action
on trauma wards or in intensive care units, Riedler
posed them as isolated shapes, often with black
backgrounds and simple, direct lighting. “I didn’t
want to show a drama,” he says. “For me, it all
turned into something very positive.”
Riedler says he was drawn to objects that
showed a human touch – some contrast high-tech
equipment with ordinary or improvised materials,
like the test tube rack held in place with tape
(centre left). Others mimic human organs, like
the machine that models the flow of fluid through
a pump-assisted heart (top left).
The main image shows “Romeo”, the prototype
of a robot designed to help older people with
everyday tasks. Top right is the “AugenAkkomodationsmodell”, invented by an Austrian
optician sometime around 1900 to track how
the eye changes shape as it focuses on nearby
objects. Below that is an electrical stimulator
used to treat epilepsy and other nervous system
disorders by jolting the vagus nerve as it passes
through the ear. Then comes a 1H/31P doubletuned radio-frequency surface coil that helped
make magnetic resonance images of brains.
Lastly, bottom left is a CaStar CPAP helmet that
kept intensive care patients’ airways open using
air pressure.
Taking photos of prototypes old and new gave
Riedler hope for our ability to devise solutions
to complex problems. “It’s about the power of
humans to survive, to find solutions to get along,”
he says. The project is showcased in a new book,
Will, due out in June from La Fabrica. Conor Gearin

Photographer
Reiner Riedler
photography.at

11 June 2016 | NewScientist | 27

COVER STORY

FAT LOT
OF GOOD
P

”

EOPLE have told me what I do is
dangerous. They have walked away
from me at meetings,” says David Unwin,
a doctor practising in Southport, UK. Unwin
suggests to his patients with type 2 diabetes
or who want to lose weight that they do
the opposite of what official health advice
recommends. He advises them to stop
counting calories, eat high-fat foods –
including saturated fats – and avoid
carbohydrates, namely sugar and starch.
Telling people to avoid sugar is
uncontroversial; the rest is medical heresy.
But crazy as it sounds, Unwin has found
that most of his diabetes patients who follow
this advice are getting their blood sugar back
under control, and that some are coming
off medication they have relied on for years.
Those who are overweight are slimming down.
This might seem like just another
controversial fad diet, but a growing number
of researchers, doctors and nutritionists
around the world are backing it, and reporting
their findings in peer-reviewed medical
journals. Last month, the National Obesity
Forum, a UK body for health professionals
involved in weight management, made
headlines when it overhauled its advice,
telling people to ditch calorie-counting,
low-fat foods and carbs in favour of fats.
The recommendations provoked a furious
backlash from mainstream scientists and
dieticians, but they should concern us all. If the
advice is to be believed, starchy food isn’t just
bad for diabetes, it makes us fat and causes
heart attacks. This is analogous to finding that

28 | NewScientist | 11 June 2016

smoking protects people from lung cancer,
says David Haslam, an obesity specialist at the
Lister Hospital in Stevenage, UK, and head of
the National Obesity Forum. “It is terrible,”
he says. “We have let people down.”
For decades, standard dietary advice has
been to shun fat and fill up on starchy food like
bread, potatoes and rice. We are told this is
good for our waistlines and our hearts, and is
especially important for anyone with diabetes.
Guidelines in the UK, the US and Australia, for
instance, tell people to fill around a third of
their plates with starchy food (see diagram,
overleaf). When the UK government agency
Public Health England revamped its “Eat Well
Plate” earlier this year, it cut added fats (such
as oils and spreads) down to a mere 1 per cent
of the recommended food intake.
Fat first came under suspicion when
research early last century found that the
arterial plaques that can lead to a heart attack
contain the fatty compound cholesterol. Then
came several studies showing that heart attack
rates were higher in countries where people
ate more fat, especially saturated fat from
meat and dairy foods. Fat was also deemed
the enemy of people wanting to stay slim,
since it has over twice the calories, gram for
gram, as carbohydrates and protein.
From the 1950s onwards, these ideas
crystallised into official dietary guidelines,
and the health-conscious started switching to
leaner cuts of meat, low-fat milk and swapped
butter for vegetable-oil based margarines.
And they filled up on starchy carbs.
Yet average body weight has continued to >

DOMENIC BAHMANN

Is official dietary advice fuelling the obesity
epidemic and making us sick, asks Clare Wilson

11 June 2016 | NewScientist | 29

Food fight
The standard nutritional "plate" suggests we get around a third of our daily calorie intake from carbs and almost nothing from added fats.
Proponents of an alternative high-fat, low-carb approach come up with very different advice for a sample day

Standard plate : low fat

Alternative plate : high fat

Recommends a daily total of 2000 calories for
women, 2500 calories for men. Percentages add
up to 99% because of rounding

There is no overall daily calorie recommendation, only a recommended range
of calorie intakes for each individual food group. For rough comparability with
the low-fat plate, the percentages in the diagram are based on an average
calorie intake from each group

CARBS

38%

FATS

CARBS

1%

FATS

4%

45%

0-160 CALORIES

500-1400 CALORIES

DAIRY

8%

PROTEIN

FRUIT
AND VEG

12%

FRUIT
AND VEG

DAIRY

16%
250-450
CALORIES

14%
PROTEIN

21%

40%

200-400
CALORIES

300-600
CALORIES
SOURCE:
RUDI DEAKIN,
PUBLIC HEALTH
COLLABORATION

SOURCE:
PUBLIC HEALTH
ENGLAND

Low-fat diet top tips

High-fat diet top tips

CARBS

CARBS

■ Avoid sugar

■ Avoid sugar

■ Fill up on starchy carbs, especially wholegrain or higher
fibre sources with less added fat, salt and sugar

■ Choose unsaturated oils for frying and spreading
and use in small amounts
■ Limit fat as much as possible to avoid weight gain

■ Fill up on olive oil, butter, full-fat dairy and fats in meat
■ Don't worry about calorie counting - the diet will make
you feel full and prevent overeating

DAIRY AND ALTERNATIVES
■ Choose lower fat and lower sugar options

DAIRY AND ALTERNATIVES
■ Choose full fat. Try different varieties of cheese

PROTEIN
■ Eat less red and processed meat

PROTEIN

■ Eat more beans and pulses

■ Try to have grass fed cattle and free range eggs

FRUIT AND VEG

FRUIT AND VEG

■ Eat at least 5 portions of a variety of fruit
and vegetables every day

■ Eat a mixture of fruit, vegetables and
salad, at least 400g/day

30 | NewScientist | 11 June 2016

SLIPPERY
SUBSTANCE
climb, as have rates of associated problems
such as type 2 diabetes, culminating in what is
now arguably a health crisis. In the UK, US and
Australia, around two-thirds of the population
are either overweight or obese.
The orthodoxy was challenged when some
dieters adopted the Atkins diet, which caused
a sensation in the early 2000s. This urged
people to shun fruit and veg and scoff meat,
butter and cream. Doctors warned it couldn’t
work and all that saturated fat was a heart
attack waiting to happen.
And yet, research showed otherwise. One
trial directly compared 156 women on either
the Atkins diet or a low-fat diet. After a year,
those following Atkins had lost more weight,
and their blood pressure and cholesterol
profiles were, if anything, better than those on
the low-fat diet. Another trial, which lasted
two years, had similar results.
The idea that those with type 2 diabetes
should ditch carbs has also been led by people
defying medical advice. Unwin first learned of
it when he called in a diabetes patient who had
been missing check-ups. “Her blood tests were
amazing,” he says. “They seemed to show that
she wasn’t diabetic anymore.”
This broke all the rules. Type 2 diabetes is
supposed to be progressive and irreversible. It
is the result of our cells becoming increasingly
resistant to insulin, a hormone made by the
pancreas to help with the uptake of glucose
from the blood. The pancreas works ever
harder until it cannot produce enough insulin
to keep blood sugar levels under control. As a
result, blood sugar gets too high after meals
and this gradually harms blood vessels,
leading to a range of nasty consequences such
as foot amputations and heart attacks.
Newly diagnosed diabetics are usually
advised to lose weight with exercise, and by
eating less fat and more fibre, including bread,
cereals and fruit and vegetables. But like most
dieters, they usually don’t succeed, and the
majority need oral medication to control their
blood sugar within a year of diagnosis.
Unwin’s rebellious patient told him she
began low-carbing after stumbling across a
website that recommended it. As Unwin
researched the idea, it started making sense.
Diabetics are told to avoid sugar, but starch is
basically long chains of sugar and is quickly
digested into sugar in the gut.
Yet diabetics are told to eat starchy food just
like everyone else to help them eat less fat. Fat
is the bigger enemy because it leads to heart
disease, says Louis Levy, head of nutrition
science at Public Health England.
And even wholegrain carbs, which are

The idea of “good” and “bad” fats has
come under scrutiny in recent years.
The benefits of unsaturated fats,
traditionally seen as good for the
heart, may vary due to their omega-3
content, which is thought could have
anti-inflammatory effects. Then
there’s the fact that when most
vegetable oils are heated, they form
toxic compounds called aldehydes,
which have been linked to heart
disease, cancer and dementia. So you
might be better off frying in butter
than sunflower oil.
Many cherished beliefs about
cholesterol have also turned out to be
wrong. Too much cholesterol in the
blood, especially a type called LDL
cholesterol, can cause dangerous
plaques to build up in blood vessels.
But more recently we discovered that
smaller LDL particles cause more
plaques than large LDLs. And while
eating saturated fat raises large LDL
levels, small LDLs are boosted most by
refined carbohydrates.
That’s alarming because it suggests
past research that used total LDL as a
proxy for heart attack risk would be
misleading – underplaying the
dangers of eating processed carbs and
exaggerating those of saturated fat.

recommended, cause our blood sugar to
rise, albeit more slowly than their milled
equivalents. A slice of wholemeal bread
raises blood sugar the same amount as
three teaspoons of pure sugar, according to
research due to be published by Unwin and his
colleagues in the Journal of Insulin Resistance.
A jacket potato – archetypal healthy fare – is
akin eating 9 teaspoons of sugar (although
how fast it is released depends on what you
eat with it – fat or protein lowers the speed).
The sugar triggers release of insulin, which
stimulates fat storage, and in the long term
worsens insulin resistance. Eating fat and
protein, in contrast, releases less insulin, and
protein is the most filling food group, so will
suppress appetite more.
People with type 2 diabetes are sometimes
told to eat food with a low glycaemic index
(GI), a measure of how quickly blood sugar
rises. The faster the blood sugar rises, the

harder it is for cells to take up glucose quickly
enough to avoid a spike. But a strictly low-GI
diet can end up being high-fat by default.
Startled into action, Unwin took the
maverick step of offering weekly meetings on
this dietary approach to his patients with
diabetes or who were overweight. He put them
on a less extreme version of the Atkins diet,
telling them not only to cut down on starchy
food but also to eat lots of non-starchy
vegetables and the less sugary fruits, such as
blueberries and raspberries. In place of carbs
they should fill up on meat, fish, full-fat dairy
products, eggs and nuts (see “Food fight,” left).

Under control
It seemed to work. “They weren’t hungry and
every week they came back smaller,” he says.
Their blood tests showed improvements in
glucose control, as well as blood pressure and
cholesterol levels.
Unwin published the results from his first
19 patients in 2014. It wasn’t a randomised
trial, but there have been such studies in the US.
In one study of 34 overweight people with type
2 diabetes, those on a low-carb, high-fat diet
with no obligation to calorie count ended up
with significantly better blood sugar control
after 3 months than those following the lowfat guidelines for diabetes. Three times as
many low-carbers were able to stop taking
at least one diabetes drug as those on the
standard diet.
Unwin’s unorthodox approach has not
gone unnoticed. Earlier this year he received a
National Health Service innovator of the year
award, partly in recognition of the savings
being made at his practice, Unwin says.
Their per-patient spend on diabetes drugs is
about 70 per cent of the local average.
So is it time to overhaul official dietary
advice? The National Obesity Forum is
certainly leading the charge with its new
report. But in an official statement, Alison
Tedstone, chief nutritionist at Public Health
England, called its contents irresponsible,
saying the report was based on opinion rather
than evidence and that it ignored “thousands
of papers”. Her colleague John Newton said it
was at odds with the international consensus.
And it has also caused a rift within the
National Obesity Forum, with a number of
members unhappy about the report.
Critics of the idea argue that mainstream
nutritional advice is based on decades of
research, involving many hundreds of
thousands of people, showing that a diet too
high in saturated fats is bad for the heart.
>
11 June 2016 | NewScientist | 31

Sugar rush
Even typically healthy starchy foods can lead to a spike in blood glucose

OR

Small plain baked potato

OR

153g serving of boiled long grain white rice

IMAGES: ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; PLAINPICTURE; GETTY IMAGES

all raise your blood glucose levels as much as

And yet in the past few years,
ears a body of
literature has emerged to suggest that the
question of fat might not be as straightforward
as we once thought. For instance, a recent
analysis of past studies found that diets lower in
saturated fat are not significantly associated
with less heart disease or stroke. Another found
that the effects of reducing saturated fat
depended on what people ate instead; there
was a small benefit from replacing it with
polyunsaturated fats, but no benefit from
replacing it with carbs. The best kind of study
is a randomised trial that alters people’s diet to
see how their health changes. Here too, there
is conflicting evidence – some trials show a
benefit from reducing saturated fat, while
others indicate none or even the opposite.
A high-fat diet could also be concealing
other aspects of lifestyle or diet, such as too
much sugar or a lack of exercise, which may
be the real culprits for heart problems.
It also seems fat is a more diverse food
group than it first appeared. Oils from plants
tend to be unsaturated fats, liquid at room
temperature; we thought of these as “good”,
unlike saturated fat, mostly found in meat and
dairy products and solid at room temperature.
But recent studies suggest that dairy fats,
which are saturated, do seem to protect people
from type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Unsaturated fats too, are a mixed bunch
(see “Slippery substance”, page 31).
The role of insulin resistance, the key
32 | NewScientist | 11 June 2016

9

32g serving of cornflakes

teaspoons of sugar

pr
probl
m i di betes also
o seems
see
to
t be a bigg
ger
er
player in heart problems than we thought.
One recent study found it is a bigger heart
attack risk factor for men than high blood
pressure, high cholesterol and being
overweight. “We have been focusing on the
wrong things,” says Aseem Malhotra, a
cardiologist at the Lister Hospital, who is a
vocal advocate of low-carbing.
Still, many mainstream dieticians remain
unconvinced. Julie Lovegrove at the University

“The question of fat might
not be as straightforward
as we once thought ”
of Reading, who is a member of the UK
government’s Scientific Advisory Committee
on Nutrition, says that while not all the studies
show consistent findings, “a diet high in
saturated fat is not optimal for cardiovascular
health”. Susan Jebb, professor of diet and
population health at the University of Oxford,
takes particular issue with the idea of not
bothering to count calories on a low-carb diet,
espoused in the new report. “Very few people
manage to control their weight without some
dietary restraint,” she says.
Such conflicting advice might well leave
many of us scratching our heads over what to
eat. Almost the only thing both sides agree on

“Food fight”,
is th
t t sugar is bad for yo (
page 30). If you tried to hedge your bets and
avoid both fat and carbs, there would be little
left. A more moderate approach is to limit just
saturated fat, added sugars and refined carbs,
leaving you more or less with an extra-oily
Mediterranean-type diet, high in whole grains,
fish, fruit, vegetables, nuts and olive oil.
This diet is higher in fat than the standard
recommendations, but a recent large trial of a
Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra
olive oil or nuts found that either approach cut
heart attacks by nearly a third over five years
compared with the standard low-fat diet.
People with type 2 diabetes, who are most at
risk of heart disease and weight gain, seem to
be voting with their feet. Unwin has published
his diet advice on a free website and since its
launch last November, 110,000 people have
signed up, and over 80,000 people have
completed the 10-week course. Of 2500 who
took a survey 6 months later, the proportion
taking diabetes drugs had dropped from 70 to
60 per cent. Although this was not a
randomised trial and the results need to be
replicated, Unwin thinks it’s a sign of what the
diet can achieve without much input from
health professionals. “The internet is
democratising medicine, and patients have
taught me so much,” he says. “It’s a new world doctors should join in” ■
Clare Wilson is a news reporter at New Scientist

OCEAN VERT/GAMMA

A new approach to
conservation is turning the
spotlight on overlooked
habitats, inds Steve Nadis

Life on
the
edge
E

Beyond the rainforest:
life flourishes on
the margins

VERYONE’S heard of the Amazon, but
can you name the world’s second largest
rainforest? It covers an area twice the size
of France, contains 20 per cent of all known
plant and animal species, and is the only place
on Earth where you can find bonobos living in
the wild. The Congo rainforest may be less
familiar than its South American counterpart
but it is no less endangered. Africa is
particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate
change, with its confluence of poverty, rapidly
growing human populations and shortages of
water and food. So you may be surprised to
discover that this region of central Africa is at
the cutting edge of conservation.
Three decades ago, ecologist Norman Myers
argued that conservation efforts should
focus on “biodiversity hotspots” – threatened
areas such as rainforests that contain an
exceptional richness of species. The idea has
since been extended to recognise the value
of rare, unusual species, too. But in central
Africa, some conservationists have a radically
different approach to identifying areas
for preservation. They are looking beyond
existing biodiversity, to the underlying
processes that create and sustain it.
And they are finding that evolution can
>
11 June 2016 | NewScientist | 33

“Species that inhabit the periphery
face different selection pressures.
To survive, they must adapt”

Cauldron of biodiversity
The Congo rainforest is home to around a fifth
of all plant and animal species, but you can see
new ones in the making on its scrubby margins
in the Mbam Djerem National Park
Mbam Djerem
National Park

flourish in surprising places.
The first inkling of this came from a 1997
study of a small bird called the little greenbul
that lives in and around the Congo rainforest.
Thomas Smith, who now directs the Center for
Tropical Research at the University of
California, Los Angeles, and three colleagues
examined a dozen populations of greenbuls –
six from the central rainforest and six living in
the transition zone between rainforest and
savannah. This region, known as the ecotone,
is up to 1000 kilometres wide in places and
looks like a scrubby mixture of forest and
grassland. The team found striking differences
between the two groups. Ecotone birds sang at
a different pitch than their rainforest
counterparts, were heavier, had longer legs
and wings, and deeper bills. Such changes
could confer advantages such as making these
birds better able to avoid aerial predators in a
more open environment. They might also
make the birds more likely to breed with one
another than with the rainforest greenbuls.
Smith and his collaborators concluded that
they were seeing the early stages of speciation.
And the greenbul was not an isolated case. The
researchers subsequently spotted similar
changes in ecotone-dwelling populations of
two other birds and a lizard in Cameroon –
plus another lizard in Australia called the leaflitter skink. The phenomenon has even been
observed in primates. Katy Gonder of Drexel
University in Philadelphia, has found that a
subspecies of chimpanzee she discovered in
the 1980s is divided into two genetically
distinct groups, one occupying the forests of
western Cameroon, the other living in the
woodland/savannah ecotone of central

Cutting-edge conservation

encompassing the entire transition zone,
along with dense forests in the south and
savannah in the north (see map, left).
Although not immune to illegal hunting,
logging and grazing – all widespread problems
throughout the continent – Smith considers
the park a success. However, he admits that
the decision to designate the area as a park as
based on very limited information – mainly
about a single bird species, the little greenbul.
Now that knowledge gap is being filled.
In 2012, the US National Science Foundation
(NSF) began funding a five-year, $5 million
project in central Africa. The research team,
headed by Smith, Gonder and Nicola Anthony
of the University of New Orleans, includes
scientists from Africa, the US and Europe. To
identify hotspots of evolutionary change, they
are mapping the distribution of representative
organisms from nine different taxa, ranging
from plants and insects to chimpanzees, and
GREG HAROLD/AUSCAPE

It’s not easy to identify the best areas for
conservation, though. We need to protect both
ecotones and biodiversity hotspots, but as
the climate changes their locations will shift.
The best strategy, according to Smith, is to
conserve areas that are big enough to buy us
some time. In 2000, he pioneered this
approach when he persuaded the World Bank
to finance the Mbam Djerem National Park in
Cameroon, which covers 400,000 hectares,

Congo bird: ecotone
greenbuls are evolving
into a new species

JOEL SARTORE/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE FARLEFT: DANA KLUCHINSKI

Cameroon. “It just speaks to the universality
of this phenomenon,” says Smith. “We’re
now seeing it in multiple taxa. As we add
more species, we see the same patterns.”
It makes perfect sense. Species that inhabit
the periphery face different selection
pressures, including different temperature
and precipitation patterns. To survive, they
must adapt. That’s why ecotones are such
hotbeds of evolution.
Despite the mounting evidence, these
mixed habitats have failed to inspire
mainstream conservationists. “It’s human
nature to protect things we can easily classify –
such as pure forest and pure savannah –
which means that transition areas are often
overlooked,” says Smith. “But we can show
they are very important, and they will
become more important still in the face
of climate change.”
He likens the situation to investing in the
stock market: “You want to maximise the
diversity of your stocks because you don’t
know what the future will bring,” he says.
In conservation terms ecotones are crucial
because the species within them exhibit
diverse forms. “The hope is that some of those
will have a better chance of adjusting to a
changing climate.”

Outside its comfort
zone, the leaf-litter
skink must adapt

using genomic techniques to determine
genetic variation among different populations
of each species. The analysis also incorporates
maps displaying the best available climate
projections to assess how things might change
in the future. And this data is being combined
with information about human activities
throughout the region, including mining,
logging, agriculture and construction, to
ensure that land designated for protection is
not already destined for another fate, such as
becoming an open-cast cobalt mine.
It’s a cutting-edge approach with a practical
aim: “The challenge is to translate our findings
into concrete recommendations for
conservation action,” says Anthony. From the
start, the researchers have been meeting with
environmental ministers from Cameroon
and Gabon, and with representatives of NGOs
committed to land preservation. Recently, the
Cameroonian government announced a plan
to create 10 new protected areas within the
next decade. At the same time, Gabon has
initiated a nationwide assessment of land use.
And, although funding for the NSF project
ends in 2017, the researchers have already
scheduled additional workshops and training
programmes to run beyond that.
Smith is confident that this programme is
more than a flash in the pan. “It will help
bridge the gap between science and decisionmaking and really accelerate things here,”
he says. That could make all the difference as
climate change really kicks in. “We don’t have
a lot of time,” says Smith. ■
Steve Nadis is a writer based in Cambridge,
Massachusetts
11 June 2016 | NewScientist | 35

NOT FROM
D
AROUND
HERE
Some unexplained alien
interlopers could disturb
our cosy story of the
solar system’s origins,
says astronomer
Simon Portegies Zwart

RENAUD VIGOURT

L

OOK up at the sky on a dark, clear night
and you will see the moon, a few planets
and many stars. Without a large telescope,
you will not notice the asteroid belt, the band
of icy rock that girdles the sun between Mars
and Jupiter. The clouds of rubble lying far
beyond the most distant planet, Neptune,
are entirely invisible, except perhaps for
the pinprick of light that is Pluto.
This is the solar system’s liminal zone,
where it peters out into interstellar space.
Here, in the Kuiper belt that houses Pluto
and even further out in the Oort cloud, which
stretches a substantial part of the way to the
next star, there may be more bodies than there
are stars in the entire Milky Way. Here, too, are
the answers to mysteries surrounding how
our cosmic neighbourhood came to be.
As yet, we know little: our first foray into
these chilly climes was the fly-by of Pluto by
the New Horizons spacecraft last July. But bit
by bit, using more indirect methods, we are
building up a picture of what is – and is not –

out there. I believe that what is being revealed
requires a fundamental rethink of the solar
system’s origins, and even of what a solar
system is. Put simply, our solar system might
not be entirely ours at all.
We have a pretty settled, if rudimentary,
picture of how the solar system formed. An
outside disturbance – generally thought to
be a nearby supernova – caused a cloud of
dust and gas to start collapsing in on itself.
This cloud began to spin faster, and its centre
ignited to form the sun. The leftover material
settled into a disc rotating around the new
star’s midriff, from which, over time, bigger
and bigger clumps of rock condensed.
In the inner reaches of the solar system, the
result was the rocky planets: Mercury, Venus,
Earth, Mars. Further out, colder temperatures
meant more material condensed, and the
gas giants formed: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,
Neptune. Further out still, the density of
material was low and there was probably no
chance of massive planets forming; relatively
small lumps of ice and rock known as
planetesimals were the limit of the achievable.
This material formed the Kuiper belt – more
properly the Edgeworth-Kuiper belt, as its
existence was independently proposed
around 1950 by the Irishman Kenneth
Edgeworth and the Dutch-American Gerard
Kuiper. It lies outside Neptune’s orbit at 30 AU
(1 AU, or astronomical unit, is the distance of
Earth from the sun), and extends to perhaps
40 AU. The first object discovered there –
besides Pluto and its moon Charon – showed
up in 1992, and is still known only as (15760)

1992 QB1. Today, we have charted the orbits
of more than 1000 Kuiper belt objects.
The standard model of the solar system’s
formation suggests no reason for the Kuiper
belt to stop where it does, at the “Kuiper
cliff” some 40 AU out. Yet only much further
away, starting perhaps a few thousand AU out,
do things possibly start to become a little more
crowded in the Oort cloud. Its existence was
hypothesised in 1950 by a predecessor of mine
at Leiden Observatory, Jan Oort, although the
Estonian Ernst Öpik had vaguely floated a
similar idea in 1932. The Oort cloud has never
been seen. The justification for it remains
Oort’s original one: that “long-period” comets,
swinging by Earth and the sun perhaps once
every few hundred years, must come from
somewhere. Hale-Bopp, the great comet of
1997, is the most prominent recent example.

Eccentric orbits
My story really starts, however, not in the
Kuiper belt or the Oort cloud, but in that
mysterious gap between the two. The longperiod comets are evidence that the orbits of
smaller bodies in the Oort cloud are not static.
The tug of nearby stars and fluctuations in the
galaxy’s gravitational pull disturb them,
sometimes slingshotting them towards the
inner solar system. Something similar is true of
bodies in the Kuiper belt. Typically perturbed
by the outermost giant planets, Uranus and
Neptune, they adopt inclined, highly elliptical –
“eccentric” – orbits that tend to end up in sync
with the giants’ orbits. The dwarf planet Eris >
11 June 2016 | NewScientist | 37

Alien interloper
The strangely elongated, inclined orbits of Sedna and about a dozen other bodies
discovered between the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud since 2003 suggest they might
originate outside the solar system

it is close, and recent estimates have suggested
that there could be some 500 Sedna-like
objects awaiting detection.
We have found about a dozen such bodies –
and with them a mightily strange problem.
They all orbit in practically the same plane,
but it is not the same as the plane occupied by
the solar system’s major planets. What’s more,
viewed from the sun, their points of closest
approach all lie in roughly the same direction.
So they can’t have been booted out of the
Kuiper belt in the solar system’s earliest days,
because that would have randomised both the
inclination and their direction of closest
approach. A similar problem means they
cannot have come from the Oort cloud.

and its tiny moon Dysnomia – the names of a
mother and daughter in Greek mythology – are
examples of objects with wide, eccentric orbits
as a result of being bullied around by Neptune.
Such ructions, incidentally, make these
bodies rather relevant for life. They may
have made Earth habitable by bringing water
inwards: when Earth formed, it would have
been so hot that any water would boil off.
One class of meteorites is rich in nucleobases,
a building block of DNA, and may even have
fertilised Earth. On the other hand, comets
threaten life. Probably one of them did for the
dinosaurs 65 million years ago: a crater as
large as Chicxulub off the coast of the Yucatán
peninsula in Mexico, which dates from that
time, is best explained by the impact of a fastmoving object such as a comet.
In the zone between the Kuiper belt and
Oort cloud, bodies are far enough away from
the sun and the giant planets on the one hand,
38 | NewScientist | 11 June 2016

and the nearby stars on the other, that their
orbits would remain unperturbed. Only
patient observation with telescopes can reveal
anything in this region, and we saw nothing
until November 2003. Then, Mike Brown of
the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena and his team discovered the dwarf
planet Sedna. Sedna is considerably smaller
than the moon but hugely more reflective: it
would be almost as bright as the full moon if it
were the moon’s distance away. Being 30,000
times further away at present, it is very hard to
spot, and it moves so slowly that it hardly
stands out among the stars. In a sense, finding
Sedna was a lucky shot: if its surface were as
dark as that of a normal asteroid, it probably
would have remained invisible.
Sedna’s orbit is curious (see diagram,
above). It is very elongated, getting as close as
76 AU from the sun but extending out to over
900 AU at its furthest. We can see it only when

Attempts to explain this coincidence have led
to the current hype about an unseen “planet
IX”, with a gravitational pull that might keep
these orbits aligned. My work suggests a
different conclusion: Sedna and its family did
not originally belong to this solar system at all.
I came at this problem from a rather odd
angle. Until a few years ago, I was not the least
bit interested in the solar system. I was a
computational astrophysicist studying the
dynamics of black holes and star clusters, and I
regarded the sun as a single, unexceptional
star in a nondescript corner of the Milky Way.
During the Christmas holidays of 2008,
a sudden thought made me begin to revise my
opinion. Star clusters reveal that stars are not
born in isolation, but in litters of perhaps
thousands as the shock wave of a supernova
shakes up its immediate environment.
Eventually, buoyed by the gravitational
tides of the Milky Way, these stars bob their
separate ways. The sun may be a single star
now, but was not when it was born. And the
gravitational jostling between the sun’s
siblings would have left its mark on the early
solar system – something standard models
fail to take into account. My colleague Lucie
Jílková and I set out to change that.
An encounter between two stars is a
deterministic process, meaning that one
can precisely calculate their trajectories from
first principles – in this case Newton’s laws of
motion – just as, in forensic science, the
trajectory of bullets can be traced back from
the point of impact to where the gun was
fired. Unfortunately, the sheer number of
surrounding planetesimals needed to make a
realistic simulation complicates the problem
considerably: it becomes more like tracing the
bullet trajectories from two machine-gun-

wielding gangsters shooting at each other
while running. But take the solar system as
it looks today as the desired end point of a
computer simulation, and you can begin to
characterise what early close encounters
might have led to it.
Working out the details is still a mammoth
undertaking, involving some 16 parameters,
such as the stars’ masses and angle of approach,
that can vary independently. Solving this
requires not just computing power, but
algorithms that “learn” which combinations
of parameters produce the closest fit to today’s
solar system, and use those as the basis for the
next stage of the search.
We have been working on this problem for
the past couple of years, culminating in a
calculation that lasted weeks on dozens of
workstations crunching along in parallel.
What emerges is a close brush between our
solar system and that of a star almost twice as
massive as the sun. Its disc of rubble extended
to beyond 160 AU, and it approached at 4.3
kilometres per second to within 230 AU of
the sun. In cosmic terms, that is scarily close,
although luckily not close enough to have
upset the orbits of the solar system’s main
planets. For smaller bodies, the jolt was felt
as far in as about 40 AU, ripping out any
planetesimals beyond that point into

WALTER PACHOLKA, ASTROPICS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

“Sedna and its family did
not originally belong to
the solar system at all”
interstellar space – in other words, producing
the Kuiper cliff (Monthly Notices of the Royal
Astronomical Society, vol 453, p 3157).
Apart from having reshaped the solar
system’s outer regions, the simulations show
that more than 2000 planetesimals orbiting
the other star would have become bound to
the young sun, about half ending up in orbits
similar to that of Sedna. Most of these bodies
were probably considerably smaller and
dimmer than Sedna, making them even
harder to find now. If this idea is right,
Sedna’s name would be strangely appropriate.
The Inuit girl after whom it was named was
supposedly abducted by a gull-like bird god
after her husband abandoned her on a cold,
deserted beach – perhaps not so different from
the solar system’s frozen outer reaches where
the celestial Sedna was found.
Around 500 more foreign bodies would
have been deposited further out, between

around 1000 AU and 5000 AU in the Oort
cloud. The remainder would wind up within
Neptune’s orbit. These innermost interlopers
would have been scattered by the giant planets
– most of them probably out of the solar
system once more, but some perhaps our way.
It is exciting to speculate that the meteorite
collections of the Natural History Museum in
London or the Smithsonian Museum in
Washington DC, or even, in my neck of the
woods, the Teylers Museum in Haarlem, might
contain material that originated in another
solar system. How the proximity of a more
massive star might have affected mineral
crystallisation in ways we could conclusively
identify is a research project ripe for adoption.
How else might we find more proof to back
up what the simulations appear to be saying?
Many hopes are pinned on the Gaia satellite,
launched in December 2013 by the European
Space Agency and soon to start mapping a
billion stars in our quadrant of the galaxy.
Naively, we might expect that stars born in
the same cluster will have similar chemical
compositions and be moving in similar ways.
If so, Gaia may be able to identify our sun’s
siblings and pinpoint any that might have
disturbed its early development. Gaia’s keen
eye will also be able to spy out objects in the
inner Oort cloud directly for the first time.
Should it or other surveys, such as the US PanSTARRS and Japanese Hyper Suprime-Cam
projects, continue to find clumpings of highly
anomalous orbits, that could provide

The appearance of comets such
as Hale-Bopp suggest the solar system
extends far further than we can see

important substantiating evidence.
Apart from delivering material into
the solar system, the star we brushed up
against must have captured something from
us. The number of bodies depends on the size
of the sun’s planetesimal disc at the time: if it
extended out to 90 AU, it would have been an
equal swap of around 2000 objects each. It is
fanciful to suggest we might spot these objects
in orbit around another star given current
observational capabilities – but one day,
who knows?
In any case, these particular hostages
have probably long since been released.
Being more massive, that other star surely
has already burned itself out through a redgiant phase into a white dwarf. In that case any
planetesimals in wide orbits would become
unbound, free-floating in the dark and cold
space between the stars. A similar fate is
expected for Sedna when the sun becomes a
white dwarf billions of years hence. In Inuit
mythology, Sedna eventually drowns in a cold,
bottomless ocean. Our Sedna might again
become a wanderer between solar systems –
and perhaps ultimately an alien intruder in a
second solar system. ■
Simon Portegies Zwart is an astronomer at Leiden
Observatory in the Netherlands
11 June 2016 | NewScientist | 39

Booty patrol
Charles Beeker is a man on a mission
to save historic shipwrecks from
professional treasure hunters

I

N THE mid-1500s, a merchant ship
laden with wares set sail across the
Atlantic headed for one of Spain’s
Caribbean colonies. In its hull were
hundreds upon hundreds of pewter
cups, plates and flagons, silver coins,
gold rings and at least one piggy bank.
The ship crossed the ocean only to fall
foul of shallow reefs off the eastern
coast of what is now the Dominican
Republic. As the wooden hull was
ripped apart, its riches spilled out
over the reef and sandy ocean floor.
They remained there for 450 years,
becoming dull and encrusted in hard
calcium carbonate. For a time, they
seemed destined to be permanently
encased in the local reefs. Then,
in 2010, a ship passing overhead
registered a large magnetic disturbance
on the sea floor. Divers working for a
private company were sent down to
hunt for metal objects, which they
found in their thousands. The Punta
Cana Pewter Wreck became one of
the oldest known shipwrecks in the
Americas. Its load remains the largest
cache of pewter ever discovered.
“This is one of the most interesting
and important shipwrecks that I have
ever seen,” says Charles Beeker of
Indiana University’s Office of
Underwater Science in Bloomington.
Beeker, 63, is a formidable man with
a no-nonsense mien and a workaholic’s
approach to life. He has dedicated his
career as a marine archaeologist to
salvaging historic shipwrecks in the
US and Caribbean. It’s a job that has
repeatedly put him at loggerheads
40 | NewScientist | 11 June 2016

with another brand of shipwreck diver:
the professional treasure hunter.
Their relationship is ambivalent,
to say the least. Beeker isn’t averse to
collaborating with treasure hunters,
but his goal is squarely in opposition to
theirs. When Beeker works on a wreck,
he seeks to leave it as undisturbed as
possible – to study it underwater, then
turn it into a submerged museum
for divers. The treasure hunters are
principally after its valuable contents,
which they sell at auction.

An early calling
Beeker’s fascination for submerged
wrecks began early. As a child, he
would visit family in the Florida Keys,
where looting shipwrecks was legal,
even glamorous. He started diving
at a young age and was struck by the
damage this was doing to wrecks.
After a stint studying botany at
Indiana University, he turned his
attentions back to the oceans,
eventually becoming director of
the university’s academic diving
programme. He obtained grants to
excavate historic wrecks in Florida
and the Great Lakes. In the mid-1980s,
Beeker advised the federal government
as it drafted the Abandoned Shipwrecks
Act. Enacted in 1988, it declared wrecks
found on the US sea floor the property of
the state government, protecting them
from treasure hunters and making it
possible to turn them into museums.
One way of doing this is to raise them
from the deep and exhibit them on

National treasure...
or just treasure?
It depends who
you ask

COURTNEY MICHALIK

PEOPLE

land. But this is neither easy nor cheap,
especially for fragile wood and metal
that have been submerged for
centuries. As a result, Beeker and other
archaeologists began advocating for
bringing visitors to the wrecks instead.
In 1989, Beeker helped turn this
vision into reality at the San Pedro
Underwater Archaeological Preserve,
which lies 5 metres beneath the waves
off the coast of Florida. Visitors can
snorkel or dive on a Spanish wreck
that was sunk by a hurricane in 1733,
rediscovered in the 1960s and looted
for its silver treasure before the state
turned its remains into a museum,
complete with replica cannons, an
anchor and a commemorative plaque.
On the back of this success, Beeker
helped establish a dozen similar
reserves in Florida and California.
Faced with tricky US legislation, the
professional treasure hunters headed
to the Caribbean, where the wrecks
were plentiful and many conservation
laws more lax. Undeterred, Beeker
followed, promoting underwater
museums as a way for countries to
reclaim their maritime heritage
and still generate revenue. “As an
archaeologist in America, I’m appalled
that these American companies can
own these foreign shipwrecks,” he says.
“You can only sell a shipwreck once
as a treasure hunt, but you can sell an
underwater museum forever.” In fact,
the “museums” don’t charge for
admission. The idea is they generate
profit for the region by boosting
diving and snorkelling tourism.
>
11 June 2016 | NewScientist | 41

Beeker soon found himself in the
Dominican Republic, in waters that
are rich in centuries-old wrecks. Many
still hold goods that were either being
brought back to Europe from the
colonies, or, like the Punta Cana,
carried overseas from the Old World.
Anchor Research and Salvage, the
company that discovered the Punta
Cana in 2010, is a division of Floridabased Global Marine Exploration
(GME). In a deal typical for the
Dominican Republic, the firm obtained
a government permit, excavated the
wreck and took half the treasure. It sold
more than 200 pewter plates and bowls
at auction in 2013 for $400,000.

Unfinished business
Beeker examined the site in 2014. From
the anchors and cannons he concluded
that the ship dates from the first half of
the 16th century, one of just 10 wrecks
of this era to have been found in the
Americas. He sees it as a prime
candidate for an underwater museum.
“This site is begging to be protected,”
he says. Aside from pewter wares,
ceramics, mortars and pestles used to
grind medicines and foods, medical
equipment, early firearms and
crossbows were also found. Beeker
says they are important witnesses
to the colonisation of the Americas.
But GME says it has unfinished
business at the wreck. In 2013, the
Dominican Republic stopped giving
it access to the area, which GME’s CEO
Robert Pritchett claims is a breach of
their agreement. As a result, in 2014,
his firm filed a lawsuit against the
government. The case is on-going.
Pritchett says GME will not shy away
42 | NewScientist | 11 June 2016

SAM HASKELL, INDIANA UNIVERSITY

Can you see it? At Punta
Cana in May, Beeker
spotted five anchors
inluding this one

from what it sees as its legal right.
About Beeker’s desires to preserve the
wreck as an underwater museum, he
says: “I have warned Charlie Beeker
once about this issue, as well as the
university he works for.” If Beeker
carries out work on GME shipwrecks,
Pritchett told New Scientist, GME will
sue him and the University of Indiana.
Beeker seems unfazed by the threat.
It’s not the first time he’s tangled
with treasure hunters. Some of the
skirmishes have even got physical. In
2007, a snorkeller came across a pile of
cannons in about 3 metres of water off
the Dominican Republic’s south-east
coast. Government officials asked
Beeker if he could have a look. He
and his colleagues eventually located
26 cannons, three anchor crowns, a
section of the lower hull of a boat and
other items, all of which helped them
conclude these were the sought-after
remains of the Quedagh Merchant –
Captain Kidd’s ship, which had gone
under in about 1698.
The site was officially declared an
underwater museum on 23 May 2011,
the 310th anniversary of Kidd’s
hanging in London for piracy. This

Thar she lies!
The waters around the Caribbean have
become the final resting place for many
historic ships. Some shipwreck sites are
now preserved as underwater museums
FL
FLORIDA
A

TURKS AND
CAICOS ISLANDS
San Pedro preserve

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

FLORIDA KEYS
CUBA

Punta Cana wreck

HAITI
ITI
1724 Guadalupe
preserve
Nuestra Señora
de Begoña

CAYMAN
ISLANDS

Quedagh Merchant
underwater museum

Caribbean Sea
500 km

didn’t sit well with treasure hunters,
who had been searching for Captain
Kidd’s swag for years. Beeker was
having a drink with colleagues at his
favourite restaurant in the Dominican
Republic one day, when an inebriated
man staggered over, pointed to their
Indiana University shirts and asked if

Identifying centuries-old wrecks is
never straightforward. In 2014, Charles
Beeker, a marine archaeologist at
Indiana University in Bloomington, was
called on by underwater explorer Barry
Clifford. Clifford had found a wreck off
the north coast of Haiti, and thought
it was none other than Christopher
Columbus’s flagship vessel, the Santa
Maria, which sank in 1492. He had a
permit to investigate it and sought out
Beeker’s help to confirm its identity.
On first examination, Beeker said
Clifford could be right. He proposed to
the Haitian government that Indiana
University carry out the studies.
Instead, in October the same year, a
team assembled by UNESCO did their
own examination at the government’s
request, and concluded that the ship
hadn’t been part of Columbus’s fleet.
Among other things, the team found
fasteners typical of 17th- and
18th-century vessels, which suggests
the wreck was too young.
Beeker dismisses the UNESCO
study as inconclusive, and says it didn’t

analyse the wreck’s wood, ballast or
datable ceramics. According to Beeker,
politics were behind the decision to
reject his proposal. He claims UNESCO
wouldn’t let him back on the wreck if
he was working with Clifford.
UNESCO denies the decision was
political. In an email written shortly
after the organisation reached its
sponsible
conclusion, Ulrike Guérin, respo
for underwater cultural
age
al h
heritage
matters at UNESCO
acknowledged
CO, ackn
that the organisation
frowned on
ganis
Clifford’ss pre
presence because of his
“commercial
exploitation contract
m
with the preceding government
of Haiti”. But she said that didn’t
influence their investigation.
“I understand that Mr. Beeker and
Mr. Clifford are frustrated that their
find is not the Santa Maria,” wrote
Guerin, “but our work in this matter
was absolutely neutral and purely in
response of the Haitian government’s
request. If the site would have been
the Santa Maria, we would have said
so, please be assured of this.”

they were the archaeologists who stole
Captain Kidd’s shipwreck from him.
The man “started getting a little
rowdy”, Beeker recalls. There was
pushing and shoving, overturned
tables and broken glass. “The guy had
spent his savings and lost his marriage,
and I guess he blamed me,” says Beeker.
Despite the quarrels, he is willing to
work with treasure hunters. Some of

“They concluded these
were the remains of
Captain Kidd’s ship”
his peers flatly refuse to do this on
ethical grounds, but Beeker believes
archaeologists shouldn’t confine
themselves to their ivory towers and
may benefit from a carefully managed
collaboration. In 2010, he invited
treasure hunter Burt Webber to join
his investigation of artefacts from the
Nuestra Señora de Begoña, an 18thcentury Spanish ship in Dominican
Republic waters. Beeker’s application
for a government permit had been
approved, but Webber’s was not.

ULLSTEIN BILD/ULLSTEIN BILD VIA GETTY

Chasing the Saint

Columbus’s Santa Maria
ran aground off Haiti

Beeker suggested they join forces.
The union was short-lived. In a letter
to Beeker, Webber accused him of being
a “plagiariser and exploiter of other
people’s work”. Webber says he found
the Begoña in 2009. Beeker responds
that only artefacts were discovered.
“Webber is upset I never announced
the discovery of the shipwreck, which
he wanted credit for,” he says. “How
can he be credited for finding a ship
that has not been found?” For Beeker,
such clashes are just part of the job.
There are signs that his campaign
for museums may have had some
traction. “Charlie Beeker’s research
provides an alternative to excavating
and selling shipwreck artefacts,” says
Francis Soto, technical director of the
Dominican Republic’s underwater
heritage office. “My government has
not given new permits, and I hope we
will instead look to make more parks
to protect our maritime heritage.”
One of the Dominican Republic’s
museums, the 1724 Guadalupe
Underwater Archaeological Preserve, is
among the most visited shipwrecks in
the country. “Not only has this provided
tremendous economic benefits

through tourism, but it also helps tell
the maritime history of my country
and the importance of the Caribbean
in the 15th to 18th centuries,” says Soto.
Beeker is also trying to persuade
officials from Haiti, Turks and Caicos,
and Colombia to embrace underwater
museums.
He visited the Punta Cana site last
month to take stock of its condition.
He says the scene looks like a war zone,
with excavated objects lying about,
including five large anchors, cannons
and horse shoes. Beeker was most
excited to find pieces of the wooden
hull. Very little is known about how the
ships of the time were built and what
kind of technology they had on board.
“[There is] tremendous potential to
gain new insight into the construction
and lives of early 16th century
colonisation of the Americas less than
50 years [after] the Columbus voyages
of discovery,” says Beeker.
The threat of a lawsuit doesn’t deter
him. “I’ve been sued before,” he says.
“I’ll take the heat.” ■
Michael Bawaya is the editor of the American
Archaeology magazine
11 June 2016 | NewScientist | 43

HOW well can non-human
animals think? Especially the
brainiest ones – apes, elephants,
crows and parrots? This question
has long fascinated behavioural
scientists and the public, so books
with fresh answers are likely to
find a willing audience.
Two of the latest explore the
line dividing humans from the
rest of the animal world and deal
with many of the same
observations and experiments on
cognition, involving captive and
wild animals. But the books’
perspectives are so different that
each tests the other in a way that
strengthens the final outcome.
Frans de Waal’s position is clear
from the very title of his book: Are
We Smart Enough to Know How
Smart Animals Are? Here he
surveys the history of the
research, and it doesn’t reflect
well on researchers. Until recently,
most studies have measured
animal intelligence by human
standards, which is silly. “It seems
highly unfair to ask if a squirrel
can count to 10 if counting is not
really what a squirrel’s life is
about,” he writes, noting that
squirrels (and some birds) show
prodigious memories for where
they have hidden nuts.
De Waal’s book is full of
examples of scientists asking
the wrong question of their
experimental subjects. For many
years, researchers thought
chimps were unable to recognise
individual faces, but, as de Waal
notes, the tests used photos of
human faces. When his colleague
44 | NewScientist | 11 June 2016

used photos of chimp faces
instead, the animals did just fine.
Elephants can’t recognise
themselves in a mirror? Sure they
can – if you give them a mirror big
enough to show more than just a
leg or two. As researchers learn to
design more appropriate IQ tests
that meet the animals on their
own terms, more and more claims
about things only humans can do
are proving false.
Citing example after
fascinating example, and often
drawing on his own decades of
experience, de Waal makes a case
for intellectual sophistication in
many animals. Alex the African
Grey parrot, who died in 2007,
could be shown a mix of colours
and shapes and correctly answer
questions like “how many green

squares?” And wild chimps carry
hammer stones for hours to crack
nuts they only expect to find.
Macaques will share food with a
companion in their troop, unless
they know he or she has recently
eaten, which shows they
understand others may have
different feelings.
By the end, it’s hard not to
emerge with a fresh respect for
the cognitive abilities of animals
and the way these match their
own particular lifestyles. And de
Waal is such an engaging guide,
sympathising so deeply with the
animals he writes about, that the
journey is a pleasure to make.
After this, Richard Byrne comes
across as a bit of a buzzkill in
Evolving Insight. Where de Waal’s
inclination is to give the animal

Great apes may owe their smarts to
processing food competitors can’t

the benefit of the doubt (“it is
safer to doubt one’s methods
before doubting one’s subjects,”
he writes), Byrne takes a more
sceptical position. Where de Waal
tells charming, witty stories of
particular animals and their
behaviours, Byrne tends toward
drier, more abstract ideas.
But readers who stay the course
will find the journey worthwhile.
Byrne’s concern is with one
particular part of the intellectual
landscape, a skill he calls
“insight” – an animal’s ability
to form and manipulate ideas
in its head. Many apparently
sophisticated behaviours need
not imply any insight at all, he

For more books and arts coverage, visit newscientist.com/culturelab

“It seems unfair to ask if a
squirrel can count to 10 if
counting is not really what
a squirrel’s life is about”
suite of abilities suggests they
have at least a minimal sense of
self. It’s reassuring that Byrne,
for all his scepticism, ends up
somewhere close to de Waal.
The most interesting part of
Byrne’s book, though, comes at
the end, where he tries to
understand why insight might
have evolved in one lineage – the
great apes – while it is lacking in
monkeys. It can’t be a matter of
social complexity, because
monkey societies are often
just as large as those of apes.
Instead, he argues that insight
helps apes learn the complex
manual procedures – with or
without tools – that help them
process foods that none of their
competitors can use. It’s an
intriguing idea, although he
sidesteps the question of why
elephants and crows, which don’t
process their food the same way,
also show evidence of insight.
Never mind, it’s all good food
for thought. Literally. ■
Bob Holmes is a consultant for
New Scientist

The tomorrow person
“Bucky” Fuller’s future visions still beguile, says Simon Ings
You Belong to the Universe:
Buckminster Fuller and the future by
Jonathon Keats, Oxford University
Press, £16.99 $24.95

now rolling over us, improving
our future through degree shows,
galleries, museums and (now and
again) in the real world.
Indeed, Fuller’s“comprehensive
anticipatory design scientists” are
ten-a-penny these days. Until last
year, they were being churned out
like sausages by the design
interactions department at the
Royal College of Art, London.
Futurological events dominate
the agendas of venues across New

IN 1927 the suicidal
manager of a
building materials
company, Richard
Buckminster
(“Bucky”) Fuller,
stood by the
shores of Lake
Michigan and decided he might as
well live. A stern voice inside him “Fuller deserves his
intimated that his life after all had visionary reputation. He
grasped in his bones the
a purpose, “which could be
fulfilled only by sharing his mind dynamism of the universe”
with the world”.
And share it he did, tirelessly for York, from the Institute for Public
over half a century, with houses
Knowledge to the International
hung from masts, cars with
Center of Photography. “Science
inflatable wings, a brilliant and
Galleries”, too, are popping up like
never-bettered equal-area map of mushrooms after a spring rain,
the world, and concepts for
from London to Bangalore.
massive open-access distance
In You Belong to the Universe,
learning, domed cities and a new
Jonathon Keats, himself a critic,
kind of playful, collaborative
artist and self-styled
politics. The tsunami that Fuller’s “experimental philosopher”,
wing flap set in motion is even
looks hard into the mirror to find
what of his difficult and
Domed if you do: Fuller’s geodesic
sometimes pantaloonish hero
design was a symbol of US power
may still be traced in the

HOWARD SOCHUREK/THE LIFE PREMIUM COLLECTION/GETTY

argues. When a band of chimps
cuts off every escape route from
a tree and thus kills a monkey,
it may look like a planned,
coordinated act, but each chimp
may simply be maximising its
own chance of getting the monkey
by finding a spot where it has no
competitors. Similarly, seemingly
insightful social awareness (say,
recruiting higher-ranking allies
to avoid being picked on) could be
explained more simply by a good
memory and quick learning.
Still, Byrne finds a small kernel
of genuine insight in at least a few
non-human animals: great apes,
elephants, crows and perhaps
whales and dolphins all recognise
themselves in a mirror, show
some empathy for others and
some awareness of death. This

lineaments of your oh-so-modern
“design futurist”.
Be in no doubt: Fuller deserves
his visionary reputation. He
grasped in his bones, as few have
since, the dynamism of the
universe. At the age of 21, Keats
writes, “Bucky determined that
the universe had no objects.
Geometry described forces.”
A child of the aviation era, he
used materials sparingly, focusing
entirely on their tensile properties
and on the way they stood up to
wind and weather. He called this
approach “doing more with less”.
His light and sturdy geodesic
dome became an icon of US
ingenuity. He built one wherever
his country sought influence,
from India to Turkey to Japan.
Chapter by chapter, Keats asks
how the future has served Fuller’s
ideas on city planning, transport,
architecture, education. It’s a risky
scheme, because it invites you to
set Fuller’s visions up simply to
knock them down again with the
big stick of hindsight. But Keats is
far too canny for that trap. He puts
his subject into context, works
hard to establish what would and
would not be reasonable for him
to know and imagine, and
explains why the history of built
and manufactured things turned
out the way it has, sometimes
fulfilling, but more often
thwarting, Fuller’s vision.
This ought to be a profoundly
wrong-headed book, judging one
man’s ideas against the entire
recent history of Spaceship Earth
(another of Fuller’s provocations).
But You Belong to the Universe
says more about Fuller and his
future in a few pages than some
whole biographies, and renews
one’s interest – if not faith – in all
those graduate design shows. ■
11 June 2016 | NewScientist | 45

Executive Director, North Pacific Research Board
Congress created the North Pacific Research Board in 1997 to recommend marine research
initiatives to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, who makes final funding decisions.
Primary Responsibilities:
Under the direction of the North Pacific Research Board (NPRB),
provide leadership for a nationally recognized scientific organization to
maintain and enhance the organization’s reputation for excellence in
marine research. To meet this goal, manage the staff and established
processes to administer sub-awards with funds made available to the
Secretary of Commerce from the Environmental Improvement and
Restoration Fund (EIRF). EIRF funds provide for Federal, State, private
and foreign organizations or individuals to conduct; research activities
for cooperative marine research projects and activities on, or relating to,
the fisheries or marine ecosystems in the North Pacific Ocean, Bering
Sea, Gulf of Alaska and Arctic Ocean (including lesser related bodies of
water) as set forth at 43 U.S.C. §1474d(e)(1) and in accordance with
criteria and priorities for grants established by the North Pacific Research
Board, as set forth at 43 U.S.C. §§1474d(e)(2) and (e)(4)(B).

Specific Duties:
Work jointly with the parties of the Memorandum of Understanding
pertaining to the North Pacific Research Board (NPRB) and the North
Pacific Marine Research Institute; the U.S. Department of Commerce,
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the
Alaska SeaLife Center to meet the overall objectives of the EIRF.
Employ and manage NPRB staff and contractors in accordance with
relevant laws and regulations to assist in achieving the duties and
responsibilities outlined in this scope of services.
Develop the annual work plan formulation process to generate budgets
for the operation and administration of all research, education, and
administration activities, and submit these timely for NPRB approval,
together with all proposals for grant funding; track and report on the
work plan in synchrony with Board meetings.
Manage the overall NPRB budget, and track and report on the budget in
synchrony with Board meetings.
Provide NPRB with all information necessary to approve research,
education and demonstration projects in accordance with 33 U.S.C.
§2738 and oversee implementation and monitoring of all approved
grants to ensure compliance and timely conduct; report to Board timely
on issues associated with grant implementation.
Work with and for the Board, including working at the direction of the
Board to develop standard operating procedures, science and strategic
plans, and other policies for ultimate NPRB approval and oversee their
implementation by staff, consultants, and contractors.
Provide oversight of scientific guidance provided to the Board and
scientific peer review of grant requests via the Science Panel; implement
and administer grants, programs and projects, and perform such other
science review functions as may be required by the Board.
Coordinate Advisory Panel meetings and reports to the Board and foster
community and public input to the Board as appropriate.
Oversee a public process of communications and outreach and develop
a biennial report of NPRB activities for Board approval. Oversee, in

conjunction with the ASLC HR manager, performance appraisals of
NPRB staff; submit to the Executive Committee an annual performance
report for this position and meet annually to agree on personal business
goals and priorities for the year ahead.
Represent the Board at appropriate public, professional, and scientific
meetings and symposia.
Ensure compliance with applicable laws and regulations and work with
the Fiscal Agent for the NPRB (the Alaska SeaLife Center) to ensure
compliance with all Federal, State and local regulations pertaining
to NPRB operations; comply with all NPRB policies, procedures, and
programs and all ASLC financial agent requirements relating to human
resources, fiscal management, risk management, etc.
Perform other related duties as assigned from time to time by the
Executive Committee.
Physical Requirements:
The physical demands described are
representative of those that must be met by the employee to
successfully perform the essential functions of this position. Reasonable
accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to
perform the essential functions.

Minimum Skills and Qualifications:
Proven/strong managerial and leadership skills; team building; and
strong interpersonal skills; At least 10 years experience at a senior
level in research and/or organizational management with 5 years of
program-level supervisory experience; Proven communication and
interpersonal skills - must be able to communicate effectively, internally
and externally, to multiple audiences; Leader and facilitator – ability to
motivate, influence, and develop capacity in others to create conditions
that elicit passion, commitment, and best in class work that builds the
reputation of an organization; Proven emotional intelligence (i.e., ability
to appropriately perceive, use, understand, and manage the emotions of
oneself and others); and a Bachelor’s degree in a field related to science,
business, law, administration, fisheries, or environmental research.

Preferred Skills and Qualifications:
A postgraduate degree in a field related to science, business,
law, administration, fisheries or environmental research; A record
of accomplishment with a particular emphasis on oversight of
multidisciplinary research that has management applications; Solid
understanding of issues relating to marine ecosystems, including current,
key, and developing issues; Experience working with and for a board
of directors; Ability to work effectively with key government, private
and academic institutions; Current knowledge of key government and
academic institutions and partners in marine science and management,
including fisheries, oil and gas, tourism and other marine industry
organizations; Demonstrated experience with business and financial
management; Demonstrated partnership-building experience with
diverse political environments at State, National and International levels;
Able to work with confidential information and diverse stakeholders; Be
alert to opportunities, be innovative, entrepreneurial, and take on new
challenges in a manner that supports and reinforces the priorities of the
Board; and Be of the highest levels of character and ethical behavior.

This is a regular, full-time position equivalent to the GS-15 level in federal service.
Candidates should submit a letter of application, curriculum vitae, a two-page summary of their philosophy on guiding collaborative
research and contact information for four references at

http://alaskasealifecenter.gatherdocs.com/apply?listing_id=2382
Applications will be accepted through June 24, 2016 and review of applications will take place in July
with an anticipated start date of no later than October 21, 2016.
NPRB is committed to affirmative action, equal opportunity and the diversity of its workforce.

letters@newscientist.com

LETTERS
EDITOR’S PICK

Free will or, rather,
free choice?
From Greg Nuttgens
John Hastings suggests that
scientists who claim that we have no
free will cannot be trusted because
they themselves have no free will
and were bound to come to that
conclusion (Letters, 14 May). While
I believe it is true that our thoughts
and decisions are dependent on
everything that makes us what we
are, I think there is a difference
between conclusions based wholly
on belief and those based on
demonstrable facts, such as the
evidence for evolution.
From a deterministic view,
scientists may have no choice but to
come to the conclusions they do –
but that does not mean that their
conclusions are incorrect. I prefer to
believe that, with our increased
knowledge of the world and how it
works, our predetermined
conclusions are more likely to be
correct than not.
Porthcawl, Mid Glamorgan, UK
From Denise Taylor
The main problem with free will is
terminology. The freedom to “will”
things suggests a power over the
universe to set the options – and
that is not the same as choosing
between them, which is the limited
power we have. I suggest that
freedom of will is a misleading term
and what we actually have is the
freedom to choose.
London, UK

Truth standards in
healthy debate
From Barry Cash
You suggest that health gurus
should be held to higher
standards (21 May, p 5). May I
suggest that a law requiring all
public figures and profit-seekers
to tell the truth, and correct
mistakes if they make them,
would be a good start?
It is claimed that oil companies
have known about climate change
since 1977 and continue to spend
millions each year blocking action
on this issue. And what about
Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo
insisting that HIV can pass
through pores in a condom?
I see a problem in getting such
legislation passed, though. The UK
Advertising Standards Authority
ensures that adverts are “legal,
decent, honest and truthful”. But
there is an exception: adverts
attempting to influence the
outcome of elections.
Bristol, UK

What renewable
energy needs
From Andy Taylor
Cheap renewable energy is not
inherently the dangerous myth
that Michael Le Page suggests
(21 May, p 19). It may be, as long as
its production remains subject to
“free market” rules.
If you separate renewable energy
production from economic forces,
transforming it into a common
good, the issue disappears. This
comes at a price but perhaps it is a
price worth paying when
measured against the long-term
effects of climate change.
Le Page ends with a message to
politicians to take action, but it is
the public mood that ultimately
drives most political decisions. It
is the rest of us that need to take a
long hard look at what kind of
future we want.
Edinburgh, UK

From John Greenwood
Le Page is too pessimistic.
Industries that use the excess
cheap but intermittent energy
will evolve – for example, the
production of metals by
electrolysis. There is a double
benefit if the metal being won is
now produced by means that emit
carbon dioxide.
Loughborough, Leicestershire, UK
From Roy Harrison
Le Page makes a valid point
concerning the operation of the
electricity market. It is clearly true
that when solar, wind and nuclear
generation reaches a certain level,
further investment in any of these
will bring a lesser return.
But he says “we can’t keep
subsidising [renewables]
forever” – when that is exactly
what we have been doing with
fossil fuels for decades. The users
of fossil fuels have not been
paying for the damage they have
been doing. In the not-so-distant
future, major costs will strike
home, which will make the
present taxation deficit look like
footling small change. We should
compare the cost of renewables
with the true cost of fossil fuels.
East Wellow, Hampshire, UK

All showy leaves
and no seeds
From Tony Marmont
Olive Hefferman indicates that
plant growth is “increased with
extra CO2 and temperature” and
this is of course true (7 May, p 20).
More than 20 years ago, the
Royal Agricultural Society ran
tests in geodesic domes at
Kenilworth with different
temperatures and carbon dioxide
levels. As expected, plant growth
was enormous in the highest
temperatures and CO2
concentrations. But the yield of
seeds dropped to low levels or nil.
That is not something we could
live with.
Loughborough, Leicestershire, UK

@newscientist

newscientist

What if your mind’s
eye is an illusion?
From Tony Durham
Dustin Grinnell reports Adam
Zeman’s interesting suggestion
that people who believe they have
no “mind’s eye” may nevertheless
be using visual imagery at an
unconscious level (23 April, p 34).
Surely the contrary is equally
plausible – that some people who
claim to possess a mind’s eye may
be mistaken? It is notoriously
difficult to examine the workings
of our own minds. For many
people, the mind’s eye provides
a convenient theory of spatial
thinking, but it may be no more
than that. It is entirely possible to
think spatially without forming
any internal visual images at all.
Brighton, East Sussex, UK

Driverless cars and
guardian angels
From Christina Cheers
Like many others, I already drive a
car that the manufacturers regard
as a “guardian angel” (14 May,
p 22). It has automatic emergency
braking that allows it to stop itself
if a collision is imminent. The
designers seem to have an odd
vision of the dangers posed by
different collisions. A bird flew
in front of me, was “perceived”
as a collision, and the emergency
brakes slammed on.
Certainly the bird must have
thought it had a guardian angel.
What if a truck, without guardian
angel brakes, had been hurtling
along behind me? Such systems
may indeed limit collisions in the
future, but until all cars are
similarly equipped, I want to be
the one who decides which of us
dies, me or the bird.
Sunbury, Victoria, Australia
From Brian King
I am still not certain what
happens if a person stands in
front of a driverless car and

“Thanks for ‘it’s the first time this has been seen
in other animals’ – yes, we’re animals too”
Elisa Drass appreciates the precision of our online video on killer
whale “culture” shaping their evolution (bit.ly/NS_whales)

refuses to move. Can it back off
and try to drive round the person?
Barton On Sea, Hampshire, UK
From Mike Daplyn
There has recently been a great
deal of discussion about a coming
revolution in self-driving vehicles.
This often focuses on anticipated
reductions in road deaths. Most of
that will be in developed countries
where many customers can afford
the new autonomous vehicles –
and which already have relatively
very low levels of road death.
They will do nothing in the near
future for developing countries
like Nigeria and Bangladesh,
where the most basic standards of
vehicle maintenance, driver skill
and highway condition are
lacking and the casualty rate is
orders of magnitude higher.
Totescore, Isle of Skye, UK

The A to Z of
your memories
From Marilyn Kirk
You report that memory isn’t
arranged in alphabetical order,
TOM GAULD

and indeed I am sure mine isn’t
(7 May, p 15). However, why is it
that when I fruitlessly attempt to
remember something, I often
remember only the initial letter,
which subsequently proves to
have been correct?
Rainham, Kent, UK

legally a landmine. And of course
not all nations have signed up to
the Ottawa Treaty banning
landmines: those not signing
include the US, Russia and China.
London, UK

When did drones
When a landmine is solve anything?
From Sune Fortmeier
not a landmine
From David Hambling
Reader R. T. Lewis notes that I say
that “persistent drones could sit
on buildings or trees and keep
watch indefinitely” and asks:
“When is a drone that sits in wait
for its victim not a military
mine?” (Letters, 28 May). If there is
a human operator in the loop
controlling the drone, it does not
count as a mine. This is why the
US is replacing anti-personnel
mines with networked munitions,
which are operator-controlled
rather than activated by victims.
However, if communications
fail, or the drone is designed to be
autonomous and selects a target
without human input, then it is

Do we want every foreign policy
issue to be settled by sending in
the drones, asks David Hambling
(16 April, p 18). No foreign policy
issue has been settled by sending
in drones. In the future, as today,
they are more likely to raise issues
than settle them.
Copenhagen, Denmark

Wide-eyed and far
away but focused
From Brian Pollard
Tim Stevenson writes that at the
distance of the Oort Cloud, the
sun could not be obscured by a
pinhead, since the dilated pupil of

the eye would be bigger than a
pinhead (Letters, 14 May). This is
surely a misconception. The lens
in the viewer’s eye will focus the
image of the sun and the pinhead
onto their retina, and this image
will contain the pin and the sun as
their correct relative sizes, with
the pin image larger than the sun
image. This will be true whatever
size the pupil is.
Great Shoddesden, Hampshire, UK

Coal has not quite
gone bust yet
From Romeo Flores
I read with great interest your
report linking the bankruptcy of
Peabody Energy to China burning
less coal and inroads of renewable
energy (23 April, p 7). I suggest that
the bankruptcy is rooted in a low
coal price, related to an extended
depression in oil and gas prices.
Thermal coal prices declined
from US$142 to $43 per short ton
from 2008 to 2015, leading to
more than 42 US coal companies
filing bankruptcy. Coal mines
continue operations while the
companies that own them
restructure. For instance, in
Powder River Basin in Wyoming,
5 of 14 mines owned by Peabody
(the largest), Arch (second largest)
and Alpha (fourth) produced
28 per cent of total US coal in 2015.
Weakened demand associated
with cheap oil and gas together
with a glut in coal, the federal
clean power plan, coal-to-gas
switching and financial factors
are the proximal causes of the
current coal crisis.
Golden, Colorado, US

Letters should be sent to:
Letters to the Editor, New Scientist,
110 High Holborn, London WC1V 6EU
Email: letters@newscientist.com
Include your full postal address and telephone
number, and a reference (issue, page number, title) to
articles. We reserve the right to edit letters.
Reed Business Information reserves the right to
use any submissions sent to the letters column of
New Scientist magazine, in any other format.

11 June 2016 | NewScientist | 53

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FEEDBACK

resist writing in after watching today’s
edition of Australia’s rural affairs
programme Landline.” In which, Peter
tells us, “Bevan Eatts, chairman of
Southern Forest Food Council,
brought us up-to-date on a subject in
which he is obviously well-qualified.”

SOMETHING to ponder:
Dennis Chesters reports that the
University of Helsinki in Finland
is home to a professor of
philosophy named Jan von Plato.

PAUL MCDEVITT

WHEN property prices skyrocket,
buyers need to go the extra mile to
find something affordable. Or in the
case of Kevin Davey, 2 billion miles,
to Uranus, which he discovers is being
sold off by online store Living Social
for just $19 per acre.
Buyers will receive a property deed,
a map indicating the location of their
purchase, and a fact book about the
seventh planet from the sun. The
seller also informs us, counterintuitively, that land on Uranus is
valued at $40 per acre, although by
who we’re not sure. “Should I tell them
that this gaseous planet has no land?”
asks Kevin.

OUR litany of strange smells in
nature shows no signs of abating.
Paul Finlow-Bates writes to tell us
that the guides at Tiger Island in
Australia’s Dreamworld theme
park inform visitors that they
may get a sudden whiff of peanut
satay sauce, even in the absence
of any Indonesian fast-food stall.
“This is because they take the
tigers for a walk around the park
in the early hours,” says Paul, “and

the males like to mark their
territory along the way. Their
urine, apparently, smells just
like satay.”
IN A variant on the popcorn scent
of greyhound feet (21 May), Tracey
Neville reports that her husband
“used to insist our dog’s feet smelled
just like digestive biscuits”. Rather
than a greyhound, this was a beagle.
“Our latest dog is a beagle mix. Her
feet are less smelly, but he says they
are ‘a bit like digestives’.”

PREVIOUSLY Steve Backshall told
us that CK One perfume is used to
attract big cats to camera traps
(21 May). “Presumably the pumas
are disappointed to discover that
the smell does not originate from
some soft, pampered, colognewearing city slicker who will make
easy prey,” says Dave Ball.
WE HAVE determined that we’ll never
be able to move on from nominative
determinism. “I know that your file
is at bursting-point,” writes Peter
Hardy-Smith, “but I was unable to

Alan Edgar writes: “Being interested in acoustics
and music, I was delighted to discover the
organist at York Minster is one David Pipe”
56 | NewScientist | 11 June 2016

AND lastly, Steve Carper sends us
a news clipping about a college
lacrosse champion who goes by the
name Danny LaCrosse. Feedback is
distracted, however, by further
information in the source, which tells
us that 30 years ago, columnist Peter
Taub of The Times-Union newspaper
in Rochester, New York, had a regular
feature he called “names that work –
for instance, a tailor named Taylor or a
mechanic named Carr.”
Can it be that a cache of nominative
determinism examples lies forgotten
in the records of that now defunct
paper? If anyone has some old copies
lying around, be sure to tell us.

A PILLAR of malachite is arousing
some debate online over the, er,
suitability of such material for
intimate use. First posted to
Bijoux et Mineraux, curious minds
were soon pondering whether the
bright green, undulating spar was
strictly for display purposes only.
The resulting thread takes in
chemistry, microscopic structure,
the relative acidity and moisture
content of parts of the human
body, microbiology and the
lead-contaminated water crisis
in Flint, Michigan.
You can read the full discussion
at the appropriately named Bad
Science Shenanigans (bit.ly/ns_
malachite).
PATRICK FENTON asked us if a term
existed for sentences in web pages
that were truncated in interesting
ways (30 April). “I’m not sure if there
is one,” says Ginny Craig, “but was
surprised to read on the British
Columbia newsfeed that ‘Upgrades

aim to reduce the stink wafting up
from below Alex’.”
Was the press mobilising against
a particularly smelly citizen? No, says
Ginny: “Disappointingly, the full text
revealed that the river flowing under
the Alex Fraser bridge had sewage
problems, which were causing a stink
and deterring motorists from using it.”
Good news for local drivers, and for
stinky Canadians named Alex.

IN THE era of declining newspaper
sales, the Swindon Advertiser is
giving individual attention to its
readers: Sam Millard notes that
the newspaper boasts that it is
“read by 46,872 people in print
and online every day”.
Such a precise figure boasts a
phenomenal level of loyalty – or
consistency. “Given that
readership is not identical to
sales volume, due to many people
reading the same paper, I find
this level of precision even more
remarkable,” says Sam.
JUST the thing for those who want a
salad without the dressing: London
restaurant Bunyadi is hiring

“experienced, passionate and hard
working” staff who will need to be
confident, as “not only will the food be
pure, clean and naked, the customers
and you will also be naked”. Feedback
has rather lost our appetite.

You can send stories to Feedback by
email at feedback@newscientist.com.
Please include your home address.
This week’s and past Feedbacks can
be seen on our website.

Last words past and present at newscientist.com/lastword

THE LAST WORD
Just lion around
If a lion were assessed under
criteria for human health, would
it be considered unfit?

in human heart disease.
That there can be two opposing
conclusions to the question of
a lion’s fitness has profound
implications for using animals
to study how particular factors
affect human health.
One reason the fat and
cholesterol hypothesis of human
heart disease, for instance, is
again rousing controversy is that
the original studies on which it
was founded used rabbits and

■ The lion’s fur and lack of sweat
glands mean it can’t sustain
prolonged daytime activity
without overheating – it ought to
get its hair cut and not be so lazy.
It is also arguably an unhealthy
eater in first going for its prey’s
organs and fat. And because a lion
“The body takes care to
runs a higher blood-sugar level
keep the testicles cool and
than humans it could be deemed
the skin of the scrotum is
diabetic.
rich in sweat glands”
Alternatively, you might say
we are the sick ones. We overchickens, whose diets and food
exercise, forgo sleep and poison
ourselves for the sake of supposed metabolism are quite different
from ours.
betterment, pleasure or
And what of, say, nutrientconvenience. The lion’s appetite
and feeding activity are regulated dense, low-calorie and delicious
cocoa? Safety testing this on cats
by well-functioning biological
and dogs would have ruled it out
feedback systems. But our diets
for us too, because it kills them.
and eating patterns are sorely
Conversely, if the deadly hand of
dysregulated by such things as
cocoa had extended from cats and
artificial abundances of food,
carbohydrate and fat combinations dogs to humans then “death by
unknown to nature, and culturally chocolate” might well be our most
formidable food fear – without
imposed meal-frequencies.
any help from the sugar or fat.
A lion knows it has no need for
dietary carbohydrate because – as Len Winokur
Chartered Biologist
with us – its liver readily makes
Leeds, UK
glucose from protein. Nor does
it have a red meat issue, because
muscle tissue, being relatively
poor in energy and vitamin
Cold comfort
content, is only its third food
The Last Word informs us that the
choice. As for being unfit in the
scrotum is wrinkled to help keep the
athletic sense, Lenny the Lion
testicles cool. But why do we have to
would experience stresses
keep our testes flapping in the breeze,
but never chronically stress
exposing them to predators and other
himself out – a known factor

The writers of answers that are published
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submitted by readers in any medium
or in any format and at any time in the
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Send questions and answers to
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hazards, while birds (with high body
temperatures) and even elephants,
keep theirs in the abdomen?

■ An increase of a few degrees
in the scrotal surface means it
can’t form sperm, and this is
why it descends away from the
rest of the warm body after birth,
hanging in a special pouch or
scrotum.
The body takes great care to
keep the testicles cool and the
skin of the scrotum is therefore
rich in sweat glands, with only a
few small hairs, and just beneath
it is a thin layer of muscle fibres.
In cool conditions, these fibres
contract to pull the skin together
and make the scrotum more
compact, forming wrinkles,
while the entire scrotum is
raised nearer to the body by
the cremaster muscle.
Unfortunately, in most fourlegged mammals, apart from
elephants, sloths and hyraxes
where it stays in the abdomen,
the scrotum with its precious
contents literally dangles in
the teeth of pursuing enemies.
Nature clearly regards this
as a justifiable risk as long
as production in the sperm
factories keeps going.
One suggestion for the
temperature sensitivity of
sperm production is that a
critical enzyme fails to work at
higher temperatures, but what
about the elephants, sloths and
hyraxes? There must be some
other reason.
Cedric Mims
Canberra, Australia

■ In animals that jump or run,
there are drastic changes in intraabdominal pressure. If the testes
were kept inside, semen could
be pushed out into the bladder
when the pressure rises. Indeed,
experiments showed that the
urine of Oxbridge Blue oarsmen
contained prostatic fluid after
they had finished rowing.
In animals that swim or
burrow, intra-abdominal pressure
changes are much less, so semen
loss is not a problem even if testes
are kept inside. So big changes in
intra-abdominal pressure seem
to be highly correlated to external
testes, and small changes in intraabdominal pressure are correlated
to internal testes. The problem
was studied in a 1996 paper
“Reason for externalization of
the testis of mammals” (Journal
of Zoology, doi.org/dq3khp).
P-L Chau
Cavendish Laboratory
University of Cambridge, UK

This week’s question
SNORE FLAW

I snore. My wife snores. Our cat
snores. Next door’s dog snores.
I’ve heard zoo animals snore.
Revealing your position to every
predator within earshot when
you are vulnerable has got
to be a bad idea. But we don’t
snore all the time, so it’s not
an unavoidable activity like
breathing. So why hasn’t
evolution eliminated snoring?
Adrian Bowyer
Foxham, Wiltshire, UK

Question
Everything
The latest book of science
questions: unpredictable
and entertaining. Expect
the unexpected
Available from booksellers and at
newscientist.com/questioneverything